


For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

by Hey_There_Ghouls



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Banter (hopefully), Emetophobia, Gen, Mentions of Violence/Murder, Mystery, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Shane is dealing with a lot of stuff, serial killer Ryan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hey_There_Ghouls/pseuds/Hey_There_Ghouls
Summary: Special Agent Shane Madej is a gifted profiler with the FBI who is sent to a small town in Colorado after a series of strange deaths. While trying to get into the mind of the killer, he falls into an unlikely friendship with barista-turned-reporter Ryan Bergara.But as the bodies mount up and pressure builds, it seems the killer is closer than Shane may think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself when I started watching Buzzfeed Unsolved that I would never write fanfic for it. And yet here I am, breaking my half-decade long writing hiatus for this AU. 
> 
> I've edited as carefully as I can, but please let me know if I've missed any mistakes as I don't have a beta reader (mostly because I don't know anyone in this tiny fandom).

It was a clear night warmed by the promise of the new day when Flight 887 from Virginia began its descent into Denver Airport. 

It was the first arrival of the day and the terminal still smelt of ozone and cleaning products as the barely-awake passengers made their way off the plane. They clustered around the baggage carousel before splintering, some into the arms of awaiting family and friends, others towards the terminal exit where a fleet of taxis awaited with their yellow lights glowing in the night. 

A tall figure strode away from the crowd, towards a car rental booth manned by a groggy-looking clerk. A few minutes later with keys in hand, special agent Shane Madej stepped out into the morning. 

The air was cool and dry, a total change from the humidity of the Virginian summer he’d left behind. His bag clattered behind him as he navigated through the lot while pulling up directions on his phone. It’d be a three hour drive to his destination and he was hoping to arrive before sunrise so he could take full advantage of the day. 

He slid behind the wheel and put the car into gear, letting the events of the past day wash over him as he turned out onto the highway. 

\-----

Special Agent-in-Charge Ray Walters, chief of Quantico’s Behavioral Science Unit and Shane’s boss, announced his presence as he always did - by silently looming over Shane’s desk, blocking out his light.

Barely resisting the temptation to turn on his desk lamp and continue perusing a forensics file for a case he’d been consulting on, Shane kept his eyes downcast, just long enough for him to sense Ray’s amusement dip towards annoyance. 

He discarded the report with a flick of his wrist and pushed his chair back. “Hey there, boss! Didn’t see you there, how’s the family?” he greeted the older man. 

Ray’s lips twitched slightly in what some might consider to be a smile. 

Walters was a big man: tall with broad shoulders and imposing in his bearing, his voice lingering just below a bellow. Ray ran hot. On his bad days, his temper and withering looks sent new recruits and senior agents alike scattering to avoid in wrath. But he was compassionate and a family man through and through; his office was plastered with drawings from his two daughters and a smiling family portrait hung in pride of place above his desk. 

“Caitlin has told her mother and I that she wants to be a vet when she grows up and we need to get a dog so she can practice.” 

“Smart girl,” Shane observed, “I wasn’t that much of a hustler when I was a kid.” 

He felt twitchy now that he no longer had the report to distract himself with. An itch had been building under his skin all morning, a sure sign that he needed to take a break; but the lifeless corpse of Miriam Reed, her throat slashed, lingered behind his eyes and he didn’t want to take her out into the world with him before he knew who killed her - 

_\- Triumph. Lust. Excitement. I watched her for weeks waiting for the perfect opportunity before my impulses got the better of me and I struck. She bled out far, far too quickly for my liking...I want it to last longer...I’ll need to try again..._

“Shane.”

He came back to himself and slowly relaxed, feeling the tense lines in his posture and the dull ache from where his nails had dug into his palms melt away. It took a few more moments to get his breathing under control, and even longer to tear his eyes away from the manila folder on his desk. 

“You good?” Ray’s voice was soft, bereft of its usual volume. In the bullpen, agents skirted around Shane’s desk like a river flowing around a stone, tactfully ignoring the sight of their boss towering over Shane, who’d slowly crumpled in his chair until he was cradling his head in his hands, his fingertips pressed against his closed eyes. 

“I’m fine.” Shane dragged his hands down his face, wiping away the remnants of Miriam's killer and reaching for his pen to start making notes. “What were you saying?”

“We’re going to the pound this weekend. But I didn’t come here to talk about how my daughter has me wrapped around her little finger.” Ray drew out the stack of folders he’d been carrying under his arm and offered them to Shane. “I’ve got a puzzle for you.”

“Great. I love puzzles. Who died today?” Shane took the files with his free hand without looking, preoccupied with getting his observations down and not particularly interested in seeing Ray’s long-suffering look. He fumbled the files as he placed them on his desk, causing the glossy crime scenes photos to spill out. 

The pen in Shane’s hand stilled. 

They were...beautiful. 

Sensing that he finally had Shane’s full attention, Ray began detailing the cases in a clipped tone. “Three deaths, two male, one female, each three weeks apart. Bodies found in and around Tellridge, Colorado.” 

Shane shuffled through the images. A man with his head lolling back, seemingly asleep. A close-up a woman’s face, eyes wide open and glassy in death with her mouth stuffed with some kind of material. A man curled into the fetal position on the ground, his skull shattered and his blood painting the walls. 

“Different causes of death and no commonality between the victims, but local police are starting to think they may be connected.”

“They are,” Shane interrupted, gathering up the images and pushing them towards Ray. 

“What do you see?”

Shane sighed, before fanning the crime scene images out on his desk like a macabre set of playing cards. 

“The cause of death isn’t important, what’s important is the staging of the scenes...everything is meticulously placed, like a stage being set before the curtain is drawn back. The unsub wants us to see something, some kind of common theme.” Shane frowns, plucking a close-up of an aortic blood spray from the arrangement and staring at it for a long moment. 

“Even the victims themselves don’t matter, they’re just props in the scene.” He continued, “The unsub’s excited by the end result, they’re probably not using the same method twice because that’s boring.”

“Probably?” questioned Ray. 

“Yeah, probably,” Shane shrugged, “I’d need more information before I’d be confident in building a profile.”

Ray nodded slowly. “I agree, that’s why I had Ashley book you the red-eye to Colorado. You leave first thing tomorrow.” 

“What? No, that’s not what I meant! Ray, I can do the profile from here.” Shane protested. “Just have the local PD send over their notes and I’ll have a working profile by the end of the week.” 

“Or,” Ray leant down, right into Shane’s personal space, “You go over there and get them yourself. Visit the crime scenes, talk to the locals, you know...do your job.” 

Changing tack, Shane reached around Ray to grab the Miriam Reed file. “I can’t just pack up and go, I’m in the middle of consulting on another profile.”

“Yes, I know about the Reed case. It doesn’t need your expertise, I’ll reassign it to Andrew and Steven; it’ll be worth it to have both of them working on it,” Ray took the file from Shane’s hand and set it aside. 

Shane wanted to make some quip about his coworkers’ inability to make a decision without arguing, but it stuck in the back of his throat. He swallowed compulsively a few times. “Look, Ray, I-”

“Agent Madej did we or did we not speak about you trying to go into the field more often?” his boss cut him off. 

Shane shut his mouth with an audible click and looked away, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “We did,” he finally conceded, “But does it have to be with such little lead-in?”

“Unfortunately time is not a luxury we have on this one. Like I said, the unsub has been striking every three weeks like clockwork, and because the local PD has been engaging in an extensive pissing match with our division out there we’re out of time,” Ray explained with a derisive curl of his lip. 

Cold realisation crawled up Shane’s spine. “You want me there when the next body drops.”

“Exactly,” Ray agreed. 

Shane stared at his superior for a long moment. He had the distinct sense that Ray wouldn’t indulge Shane’s idiosyncrasies as he would normally; and sure enough, the victims had already wormed their way into his consciousness with no signs of leaving. 

Shane exhaled a slow breath. 

“Fine.”

\----

In retrospect, he should’ve put up more of a fight, gotten a doctor’s note - something along the lines of ‘Agent Madej can’t come out and play...still crazy’. But here he was, unsuccessfully trying to open the doors of Tellridge’s single-storey police station as the first threads of sun stitched across the sky. 

The doors were locked and no amount of force on Shane’s part could convince them otherwise; he cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the double glass doors into the dimly lit building. It was deserted. 

Shane lent away from the door and noticed a small piece of paper tucked into the corner of the window pane:

‘Opening hours: 8am-5pm. For out-of-hours emergencies contact 911’

Shane checked the time on his phone.

7:04 am. 

He huffed out an annoyed breath and turned to survey the empty street. 

He could, of course, always go back to the hotel room get some sleep. Shower, maybe. Or sit on the stoop and wait for someone to arrive like an overgrown latchkey kid. Neither particularly appealed to him and the adrenaline that had been coursing through him since he’d landed at the airport was finally petering out. 

He hadn’t slept last night. Flooded with nervous energy after his conversation with Ray, he’d paced around his apartment until it had been time for his flight. 

Come to think of it, he hadn’t slept well the night before that. 

So it made sense, in a way that things can make sense and still be entirely vexing, that he was beginning to feel the deep drags of exhaustion. The kind that sent Shane’s concentration scattering to the wind and plunged the world into a strange, dreamlike state. 

There really wasn’t any choice. 

Half a block down from the police station, wedged between a trendy fashion shop and a laundromat, sat a narrow building. A sign swaying slightly in the breezed named it ‘ _Dark Fluid_ ’ in a font that was entirely too hipster for such a small town. A handwritten sign propped in the window warned ‘we don’t serve frappuccinos’. 

A bell jangles above Shane’s head as he tips the door open to the coffee shop. He glances to either side of himself, taking in the exposed brick and reclaimed wooden floors, the steel fittings holding up the carefully calligraphed menu with the wiry bulbs burning dim above, and finally, to the barista behind the counter. 

He was a young man in his mid-20s with tanned skin and dark hair that was neatly swept back from his face. He was shorter than Shane, although it was difficult to tell from the way he leant against the counter while tapping a message out on his phone in a rapid pace. 

The barista looks up when Shane steps up to the counter and tucks his phone into the folds of the denim apron that was tied around his waist. “Good morning, first customer of the day!” he greets in an energetic rush, “Welcome to Dark Fluid, what can I get for you today?” 

Shane blinked, taken aback by the amount of pep coming from the younger man. “You don’t have drip coffee,” he finally says.

“No we don’t, sorry man,” the barista grins, “if you want something like that you’re going to have to go to one of those franchises where their workers get minimum wage and their coffee is grown by slaves, or whatever.”

“Oh,” Shane replies rather inelegantly, “Can I just get, uh, a coffee? Like, a strong one?” 

He knew he was being rude but it didn’t seem to deter the young man at all who merely smiled wider and pulls a large take-away cup from beneath the counter. “Milk?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Syrup?”

“Oh god, no,” Shane says, shocked. 

The man laughs and disappears behind the espresso machine. Shane drifted over to the display of pastries and tried to keep himself from zoning out - now that he’d finally recognised how tired he was it was a struggle to keep his thoughts in order, and the idea of spending the day interacting with people - complete strangers no less - was draining. 

It took him a minute to realise the barista was still speaking to him, and he lifts his head to look at the younger man. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I was asking if you’re nervous about your first day?” 

“What makes you think it’s my first day?” Shane frowns, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation he’d missed. 

Now it was the barista’s turn to look abashed. “Most cops don’t wear their ID like that,” he explains, gesturing at the lanyard hanging around Shane’s neck. “They all have those cool clip-on thingies that they wear on their belt.” 

“Ah,” Shane replies, not entirely sure how to respond. “This is how we wear them at Quantico.” 

“Quantico?” The smaller man’s eyebrows jump towards his hairline, “You’re from the FBI?” 

Not particularly wanting to be drawn into a conversation, Shane merely nods in affirmation and turns back to the pastry case - but the other man, clearly in the mood to chat in the way that most people from small towns feel compelled to make small talk, plows on. “You here because of all the, uh, murders?” 

“I’m here as an advisor,” Shane replies carefully. 

The barista stares at him for a moment. “You know the station doesn’t open until 8, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane pushes his hands into his pockets, “I gathered that.”

The whine of the milk steamer filled the silence between the two men. Shane was grateful the other hadn’t tried to pry any further information from him - normally when people found out he worked for the FBI they were either too interested or acted as if Shane was suddenly going to arrest them for their unpaid parking tickets. 

A few moments later his drink was ready and Shane moves to pay, but before he could, the barista slides a paper bag, neatly folded closed, detailed with the shop’s logo, towards him. “I didn’t order that,” Shane says, flatly. 

“On the house. Apple and cinnamon muffin fresh from our bakery.” And then, when Shane doesn’t move to take the bag, “Coffee a breakfast does not make.”

“Thanks,” Shane says slowly. He glances down at the collection of tip jars clustered around the register, each bearing the name of a different staff member. “Which one is you?” 

The barista, who hadn’t dropped his pleasant customer-service smile the entire transaction, softens his expression into something slightly more genuine. “This one’s me,” he says tapping one. 

Shane stuffs a generous tip into it, noting the name ‘Ryan’ written in neat handwriting and studded with stickers of tiny, green alien heads. 

“Aliens?” he asks. 

“The truth is out there, dude,” Ryan enthuses. 

“Yeah, man, for sure,” Shane agrees absently, taking a sip of his drink. 

This was, apparently, the right response as Ryan’s eyes lit up. “Okay right? There’s so many sightings on, like, almost every single continent, and then when you factor in all the abductions and all the witnesses to the abductions -”

Shane blinked, caught off-guard by the deluge of words, but Ryan was still going strong. 

“ - I mean, I’ve just started listening to this podcast about this pilot who was flying to Tasmania - that’s in Australia - at night, and he reported seeing a strange object orbiting him and then his transmission got interrupted by a scraping metal noise and he just vanished - But! A farmer reported seeing a UFO, with this guy’s plane attached to it, flying off the coast!” 

Ryan pauses to take a breath. 

“Yeah, that’s a load of crap,” Shane injects, taking advantage of the momentarily silence. 

“What? How? There were numerous witnesses and audio evidence, plus I didn’t even get into the photographs of UFO sightings in the area,” Ryan argues, ticking the points off his fingers. 

“Smudges on the lens, which is what most of your ‘sightings’ are by the way, are not evidence,” Shane replies, making quotation marks with his free hand. “Lemme ask you, this guy, he an experienced pilot?”

“Well, I mean, he had over 150 hours flying time which makes him pretty experienced in my mind and -” 

“ - Nah. Nowhere close,” Shane shakes his head. “Now let me ask a quick follow up, this guy into UFOs?”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “Well his - his father did say that he was worried about attacks from UFOs.” 

“Oh, well there you have it,” Shane smiles triumphantly and takes another sip of his coffee. “Inexperienced pilot goes out at night, sees some lights - probably his own upside down plane reflected in the water - panics, and crashes into the ocean.” 

“This your special FBI investigating skills?” asks Ryan with a wry smile. 

“No, just a healthy amount of skepticism,” Shane shot back. 

“Okay, fine. But, c’mon, you’ve got to admit that it’s pretty crazy how the pyramids in Egypt perfectly align with Orion's Belt, especially given how the math needed for that level of architecture would’ve been too advanced for -” 

“ - Math was practically invented by the Egyptians!” Shane argues, his disbelief writ clear on his face. “You - you’re making out as if architecture is a white people thing - that’s so disrespectful!” 

“No! I didn’t mean it like that,” Ryan splutters. 

“Yeah sure, and denial ain't just a river,” Shane retorts. Feeling soothed from the caffeine hitting his system, he wants to argue more but Ryan looks so taken aback that it gives him pause.

However a moment later Ryan’s laughing, a wheezing breathless thing, causing Shane to smile despite himself. “Denial ain’t just a river, that’s funny, your dad teach you one?” 

“Nope, that’s a Shane Madej original, baby,” Shane quips, stepping back from the counter. “Anyway, while it’s been fun talking about your little green men conspiracies, I’ve got to go solve crime now.” 

He leaves Ryan standing behind the counter and heads for the exit, where the street has come to life as the sun rose more securely in the sky. “Try not get probed on your way home.” 

“Enjoy your first day, big guy,” Ryan waves him off. 

Shane chuckles and steps out into the morning light, the ‘Dark Fluid’s’ bell announcing his departure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from E. E. Cummings' 'maggie and milly and molly and may'. The lanyard vs. hip clip debate is a very real one that I have had at work - I'm partial to the hip clip because it is, indeed, cool. 
> 
> The podcast Ryan is referring to is Thinking Sideways' 'Valentich Disappearance' - Ryan will be very disappointed when he gets to the end of the episode as the hosts come to a very similar conclusion as Shane. 
> 
> Come chat to me on my (very basic) tumblr hey-there-ghouls.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane makes some new friends as he works to wrap his head around the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for some nasty descriptions of some crime scenes and some oblique references to homophobia.

There’s a young woman sitting on the bonnet of Shane’s rental car when he begins the short walk back to the police station. 

Dressed in the dark navy uniform of the Tellridge police force, she watches him approach with one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun, while the other hand toys with the cap in her lap. Her collar has been carefully starched, the creases in the uniform pressed so sharp they could cut, and her badge and shoes polished until they shine. The overall look of careful order gives Shane the strange impression that this had been done in anticipation of his arrival. 

She slides easily off the car as soon as he’s within acceptable shouting range and strides forward with her hand outstretched to take his, her cap tucked under her arm. “Special Agent Madej,” she greets, “I didn’t recognise the car so I thought it’d be yours. I’m Jen, I helped coordinate with Ashley to get you over here.” 

“Just Shane is fine,” he says, shaking her hand. “Special Agent Madej is my father.”

She laughs even though the joke is weak, her brow creasing in amusement. “Been checking out the town?” 

Shane glances down at the takeaway cup he’s still holding and shrugs. “Sort of? I think I got here a little early.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if you know, but uh,” Jen twists at the waist and gestures towards the police department - whose glass doors are now propped open with a brick, “We don’t man the station before 8.”

“I’ve heard rumours of that,” Shane agrees, taking a sip of his cooling drink. 

“It’ll be great to work with another early riser,” Jen enthuses. She can’t seem to stop moving, her hands fluttering as she talks, readjusting her cap, and jumping to her hair. “I’m always one of the first ones here, my girlfriend drops me off - she’s getting her Masters of music from the college at the next town over.”

A group of young children, flush with the excitement of summer vacation, ride down the street on their bikes - Jen waves as they cycle past. 

“Shall we get started?” Shane asks, draining his coffee and tossing it into a nearby trashcan. 

\----

Tellridge police station is a decaying version of every single station Shane has ever visited. Water stains pockmark the cork board roof. The walls are plastered with church notices, old memos, and the odd pin-up of celebrities and sporting heros. The desks, scuffed from decades of use, are arranged like school childrens’ desks in the centre of the room - with a narrow perimeter allowing access through to the morgue and autopsy room. There’s a persistent, lingering smell of cigarettes and Shane spots one window at the back that’s been propped open with an ashtray, a collection of ash and butts already building. 

Jen leads him around, making introductions to a handful of officers and detectives whom Shane quickly forgets the names of as soon as he’s introduced to the next one. He’s politely listening to a wizened detective who’s teetering towards retirement explain how he could’ve been in the FBI, but you fail one drug test in the 70s and they don’t wanna know ya, when a voice slices through the room. 

“So the Fed has finally arrived.” 

Shane turns, zeroing in on a desk tucked in the back corner of the room near the kitchenette. Groaning under the weight of folders and evidence boxes, with a single family photo tacked to a bulky computer monitor and a large flag from the local high school football team hanging from the front, Shane isn’t sure how Jen had managed to bypass it on her zig-zagging tour of the office. 

Then he sees the man standing behind the desk and he understands Jen’s reluctance. Stocky with a ruddy complexion and dressed like every jock who peaked in high school, the man wore a contemptuous expression on his face. As he approaches the group, Shane watches for a limp. 

Jen isn’t quick enough to hide the expression of annoyance that flickers over her face at the sight of the older man but makes the introductions nonetheless. “Shane, this is Detective Mark Reader, he’s been taking point on two of the cases you’ll be consulting on.” 

Reader takes Shane’s offered hand in a bruising grip and seems to be trying to pull the taller man off balance in a handshake that goes on slightly too long to be comfortable. 

“Good of you to come down,” he says in a voice that doesn’t seem to be directed towards Shane or Jen but rather to attract the attention of the room, “but we don’t really need the help.” 

“Oh?” Shane inquires - could’ve fooled me. “Well, we find it’s always useful to have a fresh set of eyes on these kind of cases.” 

Mark scoffs and looks around, seemingly to check he was the centre of attention. “They’re open and shut cases - don’t really need be a ‘profiler’ to work that one out,” he says, making quotation marks with his fingers. 

Rapidly losing interest in this small-town cop and realising he’s hungry, Shane glances down at his shoulder satchel to fish out the muffin from Ryan the coffee guy. 

“We’ve all seen Criminal Minds,” Mark continues, unbothered by Shane’s lack of attention, “You Feds just blow in here, diagnose mommy issues from a bottle cap at the crime scene and take all the credit while we slobs who do all the hard work are left in the dust.” 

“Profiling isn’t like television,” Shane counters, “it’s not glamorous and hardly any of us look like Shemar Moore.” 

Just as Mark is opening his mouth to deliver another biting comment, a loud noise from the street ricochets through the room. 

Gunshot Shane thinks instinctively, half-twisting to locate the source of the noise, his hands jumping towards his belt where his gun normally sits - training taking over before he even fully comprehended what was happening - until a second revelation crashes in, overriding the first and bringing his nerves to such a screeching halt he barely manages to stop himself from tripping over his own feet - That’s a car backfiring, you idiot. 

Caught between action and inaction all he manages to do is twitch violently and drop his breakfast onto the floor. 

There’s a long moment of silence which gives Shane plenty of time to realise he’d been the only one to react so violently to the noise, and then Mark is laughing, loud and deriding, and yeah, Shane decides, they’re not going to be getting along anytime soon. 

“This is the best and brightest of the FBI?” the detective mocks. “I’ve seen rookies less jumpy. How do you even have the stones to do your job - or can’t you?” 

“That’s enough, Mark,” Jen interrupts. She’d been standing beside Shane through this entire exchange, looking mortified at her colleague’s behaviour. “Let’s just all play nice, yeah?”

Mark shoots the young woman a look, and Shane can’t tell if that’s racism, sexisim or homophobia in the curl of his lip and the narrowing of his eyes.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with checking if the Fed can do his job if he’s going to be stealing mine,” Mark says, and then he spreads his arms wide. “C’mon Fed, profile me - prove you can.” 

Generally, Shane would want a second cup of coffee before he got into dick measuring competitions with the local PD, but he couldn’t resist. 

He makes a show of slowly looking Mark up and down before leaning forward and, in a tone loud enough to carry around the room, says: “Ya know, if you want your wife to take you back, you should probably stop sneaking around with that other woman.” 

Mark flushes as muffled laughter breaks out around the office. “What did you tell him?” he seethes, turning to Jen. 

“She didn’t need to say anything,” Shane says, “I profiled you, remember? And from your profile, I could tell you were a cheater.” 

He pauses for a long moment and tilts his head. “Is that why you don’t play football anymore?” 

Mark draws himself up to his full height, the corners of his mouth turning down into a barely-hidden scowl as his lips press into a thin line. Shane briefly considers how he’ll explain getting his nose broken to his boss, before the detective turns on his heels and storms towards the exit, kicking a chair on his way out. 

A moment of silence marks the older man’s departure, before the phone in reception rings and the normal office noises flood back. Shane glances over at Jen, who’s hiding laughter behind her hand. 

“Not that that wasn’t funny as hell, but how’d you know all that stuff about him?” she asks once she’s regained her composure. 

Shane shrugs, feeling slightly awkward from the look of open admiration he was receiving from the young officer. “It’s just training, mostly.” 

He can tell she’s hoping for a more indepth explanation, and Ray was always on his case about creating teaching moments with the local PD, so he continues: “Profiling is mostly observation with a good understanding of psychological typology - the second part comes a lot easier when you get good at the first part.” 

“So Detective Reader had two rings on his left hand,” Shane holds up his own hand and points, “His wedding ring, looking scratched and with the polish faded, and his class ring which looked brand new - so that suggests something about what he values and where his priorities lie.” 

He pauses to bend down and pick up the muffin from the floor. “Secondly, his phone went off twice during our little chat - different text tones, one that he ignored completely and one that he couldn’t stop himself from reacting to.” 

“And finally,” the profiler tosses the ruined breakfast food into the trash and turns around to find Jen hanging on his every word, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. “I saw him getting ice in the lobby when I was checking into the hotel.” 

Jen stares at him for a moment, shocked, and then bursts into laughter, losing her cap as she doubles over in mirth. 

“Anyway,” Shane concludes, clapping his hands together, “Now that Detective Reader and I are going to be best friends forever, let’s keep the good time rolling - where’s the morgue?”

The younger woman falters. “Oh,” she rubs the back of her neck, “I thought they would’ve told you, we already released the bodies - Chief’s orders.” 

“You released the bodies,” Shane repeats, dumbfounded, “The bodies from a string of unsolved deaths. The bodies that have recently been linked to a potential serial killer… those bodies?”

“Those are the ones, yeah,” Jen at least had the good grace to look abashed, “In our defence, we didn’t know they were connected until after Maria O’Hara’s death so we followed normal procedure, and the Chief goes to the same church as Maria’s family so he okay’d the release so they could do service before it got too hot.” 

“Right,” Shane drawls, folding his arms across his chest. “And where is the Chief?”

“Oh he’ll be here in a minute, that was his car backfiring before.” 

Shane abruptly became aware of raised voices out by reception which culminated in a shouted: “What’d you mean he’s already here?” 

A man in his mid 40s barrels into the room and Shane thinks midlife crisis alert. 

Police Chief Bryan Cooper was tall and awkwardly proportioned in that way most people grew out of by their late teens. He was balding, which he had attempted to compensate for with a comb over. His clothes were rumpled and poorly fitting around his chest and arms, and looked slightly too expensive for what his salary probably allowed for. If Shane had to hazard a guess, he’d say the guy had joined a gym recently. 

The Police Chief was scanning the room, clearly trying to locate Shane, but was distracted by Mark Reader coming up behind him and speaking in a low voice. Shane tries not to groan. 

“Yeah,” Jen agrees in a deliberately casual tone, “Chief and Mark are really good friends. He’ll want the powerpoint started now that everyone's here, excuse me.”

Shane tries to ask her what she meant, but she’d already melted away from his side - heading across the room to reach over her head and, with a certain degree of difficulty, pull down a screen. 

Chief Cooper, trailed by a sour-faced Mark Reader, strides over to the profiler to greet him and exchange the usual pleasantries traded between FBI agents and local law enforcement where both sides try to work out how difficult the other will be. 

“Mark tells me he’s already filled you in on two of the cases they’re having you consult on,” Cooper says, “I didn’t really think we’d need any of that CSI stuff from the FBI but I was overruled by the powers that be so here we are. I thought we’d start by going over everything so we’re on the same page.” 

In the interest of keeping things civil, and with Ray’s voice ringing in the back of his head to not cause a PR problem for the bureau, Shane agrees and drops into one of the seats ringed around the screen and projector that Jen has been setting up.

Chief Cooper and Detective Reader take up a position at the front as Jen, the apparent IT expert of the station, plugs in a laptop and boots up what looks to be a powerpoint presentation of the crime scenes. 

Shane’s suspicion is confirmed when the title card ‘Case Briefing’ written in comic sans dissolves onto screen. He glances at Jen who flashes him an eager thumbs up. 

Chief Cooper clears his throat to quieten the room. “Okay so as we all know, the first victim was found around three months ago a few miles out of town.” 

As he speaks, Jen is clicking through different images of the crime scene - each image being unveiled with a starwipe. 

A man sits with his head tipped back against a trail marker as if asleep, with his legs extended and his ankles crossed. He was clean shaven and dressed in a white shirt with a blue and red tie and brown pants. 

“A bunch of scouts were out doing a hike for their whatever badge when they found Mr Charlie Malik here lying across the trail,” Cooper continues, as Jen starwipes to a close up of Malik’s face. “Now, we’re not exactly sure how Mr Malik got out there because there’s no dirt on his shoes and his car was found parked in front of Ricardo’s Bar.”

“No one saw anyone talking to Malik that night he disappeared and he wasn’t immediately noticed missing because he was passing through town for business,” Detective Reader takes over. “Apart from scaring the hell out of the kids, there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the body so we were about to clear it for release when his family insisted that we do an autopsy because the guy was apparently in good health.” 

The powerpoint cross dissolves into of autopsy images, including an overview of Malik’s innards splayed open on the table. 

“The coroner found that Malik’s spleen was three times its normal size and there was blood in his gut, liver and brain - they figured it was probably poisoning but we didn’t find any foreign substances so we can’t be sure.” 

With a nod from Cooper, Jen transitions to the next case and there’s an audible reaction from the assembled officers. Shane tries to suppress a grimace; he was never a fan of the particularly gory ones. 

Blood coated the walls and ceiling, leaving splashes on the floor where it’d dripped from above. The carnage had carried through to a small attached bathroom where forensic markers highlighted sprays of blood and flecks of skin and brain matter in the tub, showing that someone had impacted against the white porcelain at high force. 

“Justin Belli was a bird watcher enthusiast who checked into Samuel’s Hotel about six weeks ago to go look for lark buntings or some crap,” explains Cooper. “Two days after he arrived, hotel staff found his body after they went to hang up a phone that’d been off the hook for several hours.” 

Jen clicks through to a man laying in the middle of the bloodbath, naked and curled in the fetal position with his hands raised as if to cradle his ruined head. Shane frowns at the image and turns to the younger woman. “That’s the same hotel I’m at, isn’t it?” 

She looks apologetic. “We only have the one.” 

“The coroner found that he’d been tortured for several hours and stabbed multiple times before his skull was fractured from a number of blows to the head,” Cooper continues, ignoring Shane’s interruption. “There was a ‘do not disturb’ sign hanging on the door but we have reason to believe that Belli was expecting a visitor.” 

A photograph of a handwritten note appears on screen bearing the words ‘Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait.’ 

Shane raises his hand as if in class. “Any leads on who this Don might be?”

“Nup,” replies Cooper, “We couldn’t find any trace of him in hotel records and there’s no one by that name in town, and to make things a bit harder, David Samuel doesn’t have any security cameras in his hotel so we couldn’t check to see if anyone visited.” 

“I still say that this was some 50 Shades shit gone wrong,” interjects Detective Reader, “Victim wants a good time, goes on - uh - Hey Officer Ruggirello, what’s that app gay guys use to get laid?”

Jen looks uncomfortable, and Shane suddenly notices she’s the only female officer in the room. “There’s a bunch of them,” she finally says. 

“Any evidence Belli was looking for a hookup?” Shane interrupts, “Or is this all speculation?” 

“Speculation at this time,” Cooper says, laying a hand on Reader’s shoulder when it looks like he’s about to start an argument. “But the facts are we couldn’t locate Don and we ended up putting it down to Belli running across one of the drifters who pass through seasonally - it’s hard to keep track of them and most have criminal backgrounds so they tend not to stick around. Case closed until Maria.” 

The next victim comes up as Chief Cooper takes a moment to compose himself and Shane has to admit, it’s a doozy. 

A young woman with golden long hair and sun speckled skin was wedged into a hollow tree trunk. Her eyes were open and staring accusingly down at the assembled officers, her mouth stretched wide around a wadded up length of vivid red taffeta. Her left arm was jammed against her side and extended outwards, reaching towards the camera. A gold engagement ring with a small cluster of diamonds sparkled the light. 

“Maria O’Hara is...was the librarian at the local grade school, her fiancé reported her missing after she failed to come home from her evening walk at the park near their house and a hunter found her body several miles away a day later,” Cooper pauses for a moment, looking to Shane, “She was meant to get married last week.” 

Shane studies the faces around him, noting the chattering and gallows humour from earlier had faded away - this case was different to the local PD, this was one of their own. This had been the tipping point that had convinced Tellridge that they weren’t dealing with someone who was targeting outsiders, anyone could be a victim. 

“Maria was suffocated, autopsy found silk fibres in her lungs, but I guess she didn’t die fast enough for the sick bastard because he strangled her as well and then cut her hand off and dumped it under another tree a short while away.” 

Out of the corner of his eye Shane can see one of the receptionists who’d been refilling the coffee pot delicately dabbing at her eye with a tissue. 

“She was still warm when the killer placed her body in the tree,” Cooper rushes on, approaching the end of his spiel, “As you all know, everyone loved Maria - she had no enemies and her fiancé had an ironclad alibi so we’re still looking for any leads you might’ve uncovered.” 

The powerpoint clicks through to black, sending the room into darkness until someone pulls up the shutters and lets the sun spill in. 

“So I guess it’s now over to you, Special Agent Madej,” Chief Cooper says, as all eyes turn to Shane. “You best get started.” 

\---

The rest of the day passes slowly with Shane combing over the finer details of the cases to try and find any signature or commonality that he could use to build a profile. 

Most of the station ignores him as he paces back and forth in front of the bulletin board that’d been cleared for his use - tacking up enlarged crime scene photos and victim profiles. Jen hovers around him for most of the day, always ready with thumb tacks and occasional questions. At one point she’s called away to take a statement about a suspected theft of a plastic lawn flamingo and Shane’s left alone with nothing but the dirty looks Detective Reader keeps sending his way. 

By the time he leaves the station the sun is dipping below the distant mountain range and he feels the exhaustion tightening around him like a noose. 

He stumbles through the drive to the hotel, ordering room service and scrubbing the day off him in the shower, before crawling into bed and clicking the light out. 

Just as he’s drifting off to sleep his phone lights up with a call, it clatters across the bedside table with vibrations as he jolts awake. He fumbles in the dark and answers without checking the number. 

“Yeah?” 

“Hey, sorry to wake you,” Jen sounds stressed on the other end of the line. 

Shane is already sitting up and swinging his legs off the side of the bed, reaching for his clothes while keeping the phone trapped against his ear with his shoulder. “It’s fine, what’s happened?”

“Chief needs you to come in. They’ve found another body.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone with their patience on this chapter - it's been a really whirlwind few weeks; Australia's postal survey on marriage equality returned the yes vote, my partner took me on a surprise holiday for a week to celebrate, and then after a very strange few days I have a new job. 
> 
> Thank you for all the kind comments and kudos, it's hugely encouraging. 
> 
> I promise the next chapter will be out a lot more quickly, now that we're through all the exposition it's going to take off.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The killer leaves behind a gruesome crime scene that almost pushes Shane over the edge. Ryan is on an assignment that no one else wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned this chapter contains very graphic descriptions of a crime scene and dead body, along with a fairly detailed panic attack.

It felt weird to be behind the wheel heading towards a murder. 

Ray Walters was notoriously straightlaced on most FBI procedural matters but had some very liberal ideas when it came to the profilers in his division. He regularly sent them to mindfulness and meditation workshops, scheduled team bonding exercises that involved bracing hikes through natures, and half-heartedly tried to institute a ban on watching reality TV during downtimes (“you people deal with enough sociopaths, you don’t need exposing to the trashy ones”). 

But most baffling to Shane was Walter’s insistence that profilers were not to drive themselves to the scenes they were profiling.

“I don’t need you conflating murder with automobiles,” Ray boomed whenever Shane tried to argue, “That head of yours has more important things to be thinking about than turn signals.” 

Which meant Shane normally found himself riding shotgun to crime scenes or crammed into the back of the forensics van. But tonight he’s on his own for the first time in over a year, cut loose from the usual FBI routine and having to consciously get himself into the right headspace. 

He parks under a streetlight and allows his focus to broaden, the sights of the street flooding in as he makes his way up the road on foot. 

The cul de sac wouldn’t look out of place in an 1950s film about the American Dream. Lined with double storey houses separated by lush green lawns, it was the kind of neighbourhood where people didn’t lock their doors at night and the entire street shuts down for a cookout on the Fourth of July. Kids’ toys and bicycles litter front yards and a lone tyre-swing hangs limp in the airless night, its occupant long since called inside. 

Shane feels rather than sees the curtains twitching as he approaches the silent red and blue pulsing lights of the emergency vehicles parked in front of a house at the end of the road that had been roped off with police tape, his own degree of bizarre normality imposed upon the wholesomeness of the street. 

He flashes his badge to the cop keeping the ring of curious onlookers at bay and ducks awkwardly under the low tape, walking with hunched shoulders up the driveway towards Jen who stood silhouetted under the porchlight. 

She was in uniform but had lost the clean polish from earlier in the day, her expression pinched and tired. 

“Hell of a first day, eh?” She commiserates, ushering the profiler inside. “She - uh - the body - she’s out in the living room, I’ll take you through.”

Tactfully glossing over the irony of the younger officer’s statement, Shane steps into the hallway and finally all idle thought tapers off. He moves slowly down the narrow walkway, taking in his surroundings with clinical precision. 

There’s a series of photographs in identical wooden frames, all containing a woman with dark curly hair - presumably the victim - and a balding man with a truly impressive mustache. 

“Her name’s Tracy Velour. 65. Lived in the area her whole life,” Jen supplies, noticing his interest in the photos.

There’s scenes of domestic bliss throughout the hall; Tracy and her husband holidaying in Greece, Tracy wearing coveralls and wielding a paintbrush in front of a deck, Tracy in bridal gown with puffy sleeves and her husband in a top hat in front a church. 

“She’s a housewife but does knitting circles and stuff at the community hall most weeks.” 

Kids flit in and out of the photos in various stages of growth. Rosy-cheeked in the snow, smiling shyly with braces, gingerly putting their arm around their prom date, standing proudly in front of a college welcome sign. There’s a child’s drawing in a frame on a side table - from a grandchild maybe? No, the paper was yellowing - belongs to one of the kids in the photos. 

“Her husband, his name’s -”

_She’s so proud of her babies._

“Stop talking,” Shane snaps and Jen falters mid-sentence. 

They come to an abrupt stop, arms brushing in the close confines of the hallway. The low murmur of voices from the other room drift in to fill the heavy silence. 

“Sorry, that was - sorry,” Shane sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. 

He knew he had a tendency to get too far into his own head before starting a profile and his people skills were rusty at best - which had led to one of Ray’s golden profiling rules: Don’t Let Shane Consult On Cases Without A Buddy. 

A rule which had, Shane thought ruefully, worked terrifically up until now. While he liked to think he didn’t need to have his hand held at work, he had come to rely on the sounds of Zach and Eugene bickering while bagging up evidence, the sight of Niki wrangling local law enforcement with cheerful ruthlessness, and Garrett calmly shadowing him to keep Shane grounded. 

Still, he was good at his job, damn it, and he couldn’t let his chronic foot-in-mouth screw up his first solo case. 

“It’s easier for me to not hear about the victim before I see the crime scene for the first time,” Shane explains, holding his hands out apologetically. “Going in blank means I’m seeing what the killer saw, and not Karen from finance with her guts hanging out.” 

Remarkably, Jen doesn’t seem particularly put out by his outburst - “Okay cool, well just forget everything I just told you and come through.”

It takes them both a moment to adjust upon stepping from the dimly lit hallway into the living room - every light had been switched on and a crime scene technicians’ camera flashes continuously - and when the spots clear from his eyes Shane has to bite back a sigh. 

It was a weird one. 

The body sat rigidly upright in a high backed armchair, her arms were extended out on the armrests with her palms turned upwards invitingly towards the vaulted ceiling. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slack; other than the strange hue of her skin, it almost looked as if she’d fallen asleep whilst watching TV. There was no cause of death that Shane could immediately see, not that he was looking too closely as one thing in particular had caught his attention. Tied around her neck, in a flourishing bow, was a thick green ribbon. 

Almost all of Tellridge’s police force was crowded into the room, making the air humid and stifling. Shane spots Chief Cooper standing to one side, sweat patches spreading under his arms, deep in conversation with Detective Mark Reader.

“What’s with the ribbon?” he asks as he joins the pair.

Mark looks unimpressed. “Shouldn’t you be telling us?”

More aware than ever that he’s the odd one out on this case, Shane tampers down the urge to suggest he and Mark carpool to the next murder to save on gas, and turns to Cooper. “I can get started on the walk through now so we don’t delay forensics for too long - about twenty minutes should do it.” 

“What?” Chief Cooper shakes his head, “Why would you be delaying the guys? Do you need their help or somethin’?” 

“Um,” Shane says, momentarily confused. “No? I need the room clear to examine the scene and get into the headset of the unsub so I can build the profile.”

“Yeah. That ain’t happening,” Cooper shoots back.

“But it’s standard procedure -” 

“I gotta deal with cops from three counties wanting to come give their two cents,” Cooper interrupts, ticking points off his fingers, “I need to get the scene processed and the body outta here before the press turn up, and I’ve got Jay Valour trying to tell the paramedics that his wife needs to be taken to hospital - I don’t got time for your _Silence of the Lambs_ shit. Work around them or get out of the way.” 

Shane opens his mouth and closes it, tension lacing up his spine. “Okay. Sure. Can do, Chief.” 

He steps away and tries to refocus on the scene, ignoring the angry buzz that had started at the back of his mind. The room is pristine, without any sign of struggle - although it’d be easy to miss amongst the constant shifting movement of the forensics team and the officers milling around.

He closes his eyes and mentally empties out the room, winding back the clock until the curtains open and morning sunlight streams in. Based on the degree of rigor mortis, time of death would’ve had to have been sometime in the early morning, right after her husband left for work - 

_\- I enter through the back door, letting the forest cover my approach. She’s not surprised to see me, although she doesn’t know me well. I wait until she turns her back and -_

Someone bumps into Shane and the illusion shatters. A cacophony of heat, noise and movement rushes in, sending his concentration skittering away. Detective Reader is watching him from across the room, tapping his watch with an amused smirk. _Tick tock, Madej._

Fine. Whatever. He’ll start with the body and work his way back. 

Shane weaves his way across the room to stand beside the medical examiner and his assistant as they photograph the body, the flash of the camera throwing the scene into harsh relief. 

There was something very wrong with the body.

Everything was drawn taut, bones protruding and threatening to tear through the paper-thin skin, her complexion ashen, and her veins unnaturally raised and puffy with deep gouges at her wrists and the crooks of her elbows. Shane had only seen corpses like this in lectures and black and white textbooks.

“Exsanguination?” he asks, eyebrows lifting in surprise. 

“Never seen anything like it,” the medical examiner confirms, sounding unsettled. “The sick son-of-a-bitch would’ve had to have multiple IVs running at the same time to drain her so quickly.” 

“The unsub drugged her,” Shane speculates, “To avoid the, uh -”

“The look of complete terror? Yeah,” the other man agrees. The assistant’s camera flashes again. “Haven’t been game to touch her yet lookin’ the way she does, she’s going to be a nightmare to get out to the bus.” 

Shane hums in agreement and backs off to let the two men work, moving to stand in front of the body. The green ribbon was needling at him; it made no sense with the composition of the scene and was at odds with the other deaths - the unsub had never added anything to the body before, so why start with a ribbon?

_“Please tell me now, why do you always wear that ribbon around your neck?”_

Shane shakes his head slightly to chase out all the thoughts that were crowding in. Everything was far too noisy and hot and he needed to focus on Tracy. Perhaps the unsub was attempting to cover up injuries to the body - although that made no sense alongside the blatant track marks on the arms - maybe it was intended as a gift for someone - but who? Jay Valour?

Dimly, he heard the medical examiner speaking to his assistant. “Take that thing off her neck and get a shot of it - would ya?”

_In a croaky voice his wife replied. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Take it off now.”_

Clarity plunges its icy cold fingers into Shane’s chest, jolting him into motion. 

“No, wait! Don’t touch it,” he orders, darting forward. 

But it was too late. 

The assistant grasps the end of the ribbon and pulls, sending Tracy Valour’s head toppling from her shoulders with a dry peeling slurp. It pitches forward, striking the ground with a crack loud enough to shock the room into silence and continues forward - rolling until it came to rest, face up, at Shane’s feet. 

Her eyes fly open and roll wildly around in her skull before settling on Shane - the whites of her eyes almost completely lost amongst the mess of burst capillaries. Her lips part and begin to move -

_\- Help me, please! Please! Oh god oh god oh god why are you doing this? I know you! I know you! Why are you doing this to us? It hurts! You’re hurting me! I can’t breathe why are you doing this oh god - Jay help me please I don’t want to die -_

Someone’s wailing and for one terrible moment Shane thinks it’s coming from him, before he’s able to tear his eyes away from Tracy Valour - her eyes closed and completely at peace - and look to the doorway to the kitchen where a man has fallen to his knees. 

“Tracy? Tracy! Oh my god what have you done to her?” Jay Valour howls at Shane, wild with grief and so full of accusation that Shane flinches back in shock -

 _\- concealing a 12 inch bone saw behind his back_ \- feeling the all-too familiar full-bodied flush of heat prickling under his skin as he involuntarily starts to shake - _in anticipation but his hands are steady_ \- his chest constricting, each breath more ragged than the last - _completely in control, he’s going to enjoy this -_

Somewhere, far away, Chief Cooper is screaming for someone to get Jay Valour out of the room and as Tellridge’s finest scramble towards the collapsed man, Shane staggers back from Tracy Valour’s remains. Hoping the chaos of the scene is enough to mask his hasty departure, the profiler stumbles through the back of the house and outside, slamming the back screen door open with enough force that it cracks against the side of the house like a gunshot. 

Shane gulps in lungfuls of air, unable to breathe deeply enough to ease the crushing band that encircled his chest, and manages to take two steps out onto the deck before his knees buckle and he has to catch himself on the railing. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ He’d gotten the victim tangled up with the unsub - a rookie mistake that would cost him whatever limited credibility he had with the local PD and would surely make its way back to Walters before the end of the night. He was screwed. 

Shane hangs his head and tries to force himself to take slower breaths, fighting the waves of tension that roll off his shoulders and down his arms, the muscles contracting painfully. He focuses on the feeling of cracked paint under his hands and listens for any sound to drown out the racing thud of his own pulse. 

After an eternity passes within a few minutes, the chirp of crickets creeps in and the rigid lines of his shoulders slowly melt away. He feels lightheaded, but is breathing more easily. His head was quiet now, completely devoid of the voices which had overwhelmed him before. 

Someone is watching him. 

Lifting his head, Shane scans the unfenced backyard, his gaze settling on a spot just before the lawn melts into the forest where a lone figure stands, barely illuminated by the floodlights of the house. 

The sight of someone intensely staring at the scene of a gruesome murder like a cheap horror movie villain is enough to propel the profiler down the decking’s few steps and across the lawn. 

“Hey, it’s Mister Drip Coffee,” the figure greets at Shane’s approach. 

After a momentary struggle to place the man amongst the sea of faces he’d seen over the past eighteen hours, Shane’s face lights up in recognition. “Oh, Ryan the coffee guy!” 

“Aw, you didn’t recognise me?” Ryan jokes, “I thought we had a real meaningful connection today, I thought I was someone special.”

“The provider of my morning coffee will always hold a dear place in my heart,” Shane quips, the residual tremors of his panic attack fading away. “But, uh, ya know, murder can be a bit of a mood killer. Pun intended.” 

“Yeah, about that,” Ryan’s expression turns somber. “Are you okay? That looked rough.” 

“What? That?” Shane waves a vague hand over his shoulder towards where he’d collapsed just minutes ago. “That’s nothing, standard FBI profiling procedure. I’m fine.” 

“You sure? I’m not familiar with the finer points of FBI profiling but that was all very Will Graham in _Hannibal.”_

Shane wrinkles his brow in confusion. “You mean _Silence of the Lambs?”_

“Nah man, it’s, like, this show about the guy who caught Hannibal Lecter - really fucked up stuff but great visuals.” 

“Huh.” 

The fatigue which always accompanied one of Shane’s episodes was seeping in; the last time something like this had happened he’d been bundled away from the crime scene and taken off the case before he’d fully regained his senses. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been outside but it was surely long enough for someone to notice his absence, and yet no one was coming. 

Maybe it was the expectant look on Ryan’s face, or the fact that he was standing in the dark with a complete stranger who’d already shown more concern for wellbeing than the people who had a vested in him not losing his marbles, but Shane felt uncomfortably exposed. 

“I can’t remember the last time I slept,” he suddenly confesses, taking both men by surprise.

“Are you hitting on me?” Ryan asks, quirking a brow, “Because I gotta tell ya, man, I’m not that easy - you gotta buy me a drink first.” 

“Oh, uh no I - I meant -” Shane fumbles, tripping over his words in an effort to backtrack and Ryan’s grinning at him, teeth flashing bright in the dark. 

“It’s cool, I understand,” Ryan reassures, “If I’d known I wouldn’t have given you that extra espresso shot this morning - you gotta switch to herbal tea, that stuff always puts me out like a light. Look after yourself, man.”

“So what are you doing here?” Shane asks, quickly changing the topic, “You live nearby?”

“Uh, no. I’m working, actually,” Ryan replies.

“Working?” Shane smiles faintly, “I didn’t realise we had a barista on call.” 

The younger man fidgets and looks away. “Right, you wouldn’t know...I’m with the local paper.” 

He reaches into the folds of his light windbreaker and pulls out a press pass, holding it out to the profiler who draws back as if burnt. 

“I can’t give any comments to the media,” Shane snaps, a hard edge creeping into his voice. 

“Trust me, I don’t want to be talking to anyone,” Ryan says, tucking the pass away.

“I wouldn’t even be here but no one else would take it and we’re syndicated and our media company has been calling non-stop - normally they’d send Jay but -” the younger man breaks off, looking stricken. 

“Jay, as in, Jay Velour?” Shane asks, waving a hand over his shoulder towards the house as realisation dawns on him.

Ryan nods. “Yeah he’s the senior crime correspondent for the area - I’m just the junior reporter who made the mistake of listening to my professor in college who said the fastest way to get to the top of the masthead was to join a small town paper.” 

“Velour’s been the one covering all the other deaths?” Shane queries, feeling as if he was looking at a picture that was slowly pulling into focus.

“Yep, and he got a bit of pushback from our editor because he wasn’t giving enough attention to the murders and kept saying that it was all just random and the paper shouldn’t be seen to be encouraging copycats - like we’re the New York Times or something.”

“Me on the other hand,” the younger man continues, “I normally do puff pieces on the grade school baseball league and interviews with that woman who saw Bigfoot”

That was enough to temporarily derail Shane’s train of thought. “Someone saw Bigfoot near here?” 

Ryan brightens noticeably at the attention. “Yeah! It’s one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard, she was on this hike about thirty minutes from here and he just walked out of the trees and looked at her - he apparently smells terrible.”

“She didn’t take a picture or anything, but Colorado is a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings which in my thinking makes it all fairly legitimate,” he pauses as if expecting to Shane to interrupt. “You’re going to say there’s not enough evidence, I know.” 

“Nup,” Shane shakes his head, “I mean yeah, she was probably just a crazy in the woods - but the will to believe is there, buddy.” 

“You’ll mock my alien sightings but you’re giving the eight foot tall ape a pass?” 

“He’s meat and bones, unlike your other conspiracies that rely on a lot of science fiction,” Shane shrugs. “Bigfoot’s cool.” 

“Yeah,” Ryan grins, “Bigfoot is cool.” 

“Special agent Madej!” A voice booms across the yard, causing both men to turn towards the house where Chief Cooper had emerged. “Get back here!”

“Duty calls,” Shane tells Ryan ruefully, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“Good luck, and don’t forget to try herbal tea - or better yet! Come by the store sometime, I’ll make you some and’ll show you some of the Bigfoot pictures I found online,” Ryan says, wiggling his fingers in farewell. 

Shane can sense the anger rolling off Cooper in waves as he crosses the lawn, but felt the lightest he’d been since getting on the plane to Colorado. 

“I shouldn’t have to tell you not to talk to the press,” Cooper grouches as Shane climbs the landing. 

“He’s not the press, that’s my barista,” Shane replies, breezing past Cooper. “C’mon, the unsub targeted the victim because of the husband’s reporting - this is revenge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to offer a big apology to everyone who has been waiting so long for this chapter. When I originally started this work I'd just left a toxic work environment with plans to take a sabbatical until mid-Feburary - however a new job opportunity came along that was too good to pass up but unfortunately that means all my writing time is now taken up with work. My new years resolution is to be more organised so (fingers crossed) the chapters should be coming out more regularly. 
> 
> A big thank you to my partner (and now fiancé!) for all her support while I struggled with getting the right tone for this chapter - and also for her alarmingly detailed knowledge of exsanguination. 
> 
> The few lines that Shane briefly recalls is "The Green Ribbon" from Alvin Schwartz's 'In A Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories.' 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments - they mean the world to me. Some of you have already guessed the direction of this story, but hopefully you still enjoy the ride. And you can always come chat to me on Tumblr @hey-there-ghouls.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pressure mounts as Shane races to find a lead on the killer before they can strike again. Meanwhile, his friendship with Ryan continues to grow as Shane clashes with the local police department.

_21 days to go_

Shane starts the countdown on a whiteboard he’d commandeered from the storeroom the morning after they found Tracy Velour’s remains. He’d gone straight to the station after spending all night at the crime scene, only stopping to change his shirt and splash some water on his face.

“This unsub is incredibly organised and works to a strict schedule,” he tells the assembled officers, turning to write a large ‘ _21_ ’ on the whiteboard.

“They will kill again in three weeks time unless we find them or find a way to disrupt their routine, ” he concludes, drawing a line under the deadline for emphasis.

It wasn’t the most stirring of speeches, but from the air of defeat hanging in the room it’d be easy to think Shane had just told everyone he was sending them into no man’s land. While the FBI treated every hard deadline as a challenge, the death of Tracy Velour appeared to have stupefied most of the department. Everyone was moving at half-speed, fuelled by coffee and Chief Cooper periodically emerging from his office to yell at anyone who was moving too slowly for his liking.

The stress on Cooper was clear. It was obvious to Shane that the man had never dealt with a case so complex before, especially with such thin resources. His unwillingness to accept help from surrounding counties had meant half of his team needed to remain behind at the house to finish processing the crime scene and canvass the area.

Further complicating matters, Ryan’s story had been published sometime early in the morning and was picked up nationally.

The slow summer news cycle coupled with the fact that journalists loved to write about themselves had ensured the story headlined around the country. The station had been inundated by calls from the press and concerned citizens who were convinced the unsub would somehow reach them in Minnesota. Half of the remaining officers, including a hyper alert but easily distracted Jen, had to be redirected to answering phones and taking tips.

It also wasn’t clear who exactly was the lead investigator for the case. Both Cooper and Reader had shut themselves off in Cooper’s office and although occasionally the sound of the two men arguing emerged from behind the closed door, little direction was issued to the demotivated police force.

Shane spends most of the day by himself - pouring over the limited information that was trickling in, comparing it to the previous cases and searching for anything that could give him an idea about what was motivating this unsub.

At some point, late in the afternoon when he’s standing in front of his evidence board, Chief Cooper comes to join him.

“Ya still think this could be revenge?” he asks, taking in the notes and evidence Shane had added throughout the day.

“It’s a good a starting point as any,” Shane shrugs. “I’m still waiting for the paper to send me all of Velour’s writing on the unsub, but what I’ve seen would piss me off if I were them. The crime scenes are so intricate that I’d say they have a real attention-seeking drive and for them to be dismissed so publicly...well, we saw what happened.”

“But it could be what caused the other deaths?” Cooper persists, “Someone said the wrong thing and this psycho went off the deep end?”

“I’m not comfortable diagnosing them as a psychopath just yet,” Shane replies, “Revenge could be a motivating factor, it’d point to someone local which would make sense.”

“No one from here did this,” Cooper says immediately. “Reader and I think it’ll be one of the drifters who pass through here all the time.”

 Shane doesn’t argue, itchy with fatigue and still on thin ice from his outburst the other night. “You’ll reinterview the families of the other victims?”

Cooper nods. “I’ll make some calls.”

_20 days to go_

“How’d this happen?” Shane demands.

He’s standing in one of Tellridge’s tiny hospital rooms, staring down at the two uniformed officers who sat at the end of Jay Velour’s bed.

Jay Velour had been transported to the emergency room after collapsing at the crime scene. In the chaos of the moment, Chief Cooper had sent the medics away without any accompanying officers; something that Shane had corrected once he’d returned from his little meltdown outside.

Two officers who’d been milling around the crime scene were dispatched to the hospital to take Velour’s statement.

It was only after almost two days had passed that their absence had been noticed and Shane, the only person not actively interviewing witnesses or answering calls from the public, was sent to track them down.

Jay Velour, as Shane discovered, had arrived at the hospital in a state of total hysteria - screaming and lashing out at staff before being sedated. The two officers, not knowing what to do, had waited. For two days.

“His wife’s head fell off right in front of him, buddy,” one of the officers tries to explain. “We didn’t think it’d hurt to let him rest for a bit before talking with him.”

“You didn’t think it would hurt?” Shane repeats, stunned. “We’re accountable to the public on this, do you understand that? Any statement we take now is going to have to come with the caveat that it was taken two days after the crime occurred, under heavy sedation!”

“It’s really not that bad,” the second officer soothes. “When Maria O’Hara died the Chief had us wait a week before we went to talk to her family.”

“Jesus Christ.”

_19 days to go_

The revenge angle wasn’t panning out. 

Maria O’Hara was a good Christian girl who’d helped teach half the town’s children to read - if she’d had any flaws, everyone who was interviewed tells the detectives, it was that she was too helpful, always willing to give a complete stranger the shirt off her back.  

The two out-of-towners were even less help. They’d left only fleeting imprints on the town; the shopkeeper who sold Charlie Malik trail mix, the newsagent who showed him stamps printed with rare larks, the father of two who saw Justin Belli drinking alone in Ricardo’s Bar, the taxi driver who saw him smoking outside the hotel. Both men slipped away at some point, vanishing from the gaze of the town’s limited CCTV cameras. By all accounts they hadn’t been around long enough to warrant any grudges.

“Waste of time,” Detective Reader grouches, shoulder-checking Shane as they leave another fruitless interview.

_18 days to go_

After the fourth consecutive day of drinking the station’s disgusting excuse for coffee, Shane’s gag reflex finally outweighs his drive to continue working and he heads out - blinking owlishly in the bright sunlight he hadn’t seen in nearly a week.

The morning rush at ‘ _Dark Fluid’_ has long ended and the shop is empty other than, to Shane’s surprise, Ryan. The younger man sits perched on a stool that has been drawn close to the counter, one elbow resting on the countertop and his head slightly tilted. His eyes are tired and his hair is flat and unkempt. He’s staring into space, occasionally sipping from a coffee cup. A rag lies abandoned on the counter, as if Ryan had become distracted whilst in the middle of cleaning.

Shane clears his throat and Ryan startles back into life.

“Sorry, man. Didn’t see you there,” he apologises, straightening up. “We’re not meant to sit while working, but whatever, I’m doing them a favour.”

“Yeah I’m kinda surprised to see you here, mister big-famous-reporter,” Shane jokes.

Ryan grins. “You saw it? It was good, right?”

“It was really well written,” Shane agrees.

And it was. He’d been impressed how Ryan handled such grim subject that’d turn the stomachs of more seasoned reporters with such grace and sensitvely - deftly linking the cases together whilst honouring the life of Tracy Velour. Shane could see why it’d been picked up nationally.

“I liked it,” he adds, and Ryan preens. “Although I have to ask, what’s with the two jobs? The print industry really in that much trouble? 

“That and my reporter gig is really just a glorified cadetship,” the other man shrugs. “I make more in tips here than I make in a week there. Although, my boss told everyone yesterday that Jay is taking indefinite leave so I might get shuffled up to a more permanent role.”

“Not that I exactly want to be promoted because a guy’s wife died, but I wouldn’t knock getting to stop pulling double duty,” Ryan continues, gesturing with his coffee cup, “I’m just going between the paper and here, my sleep cycle is all messed up, this is my fifth today.”

“And you had the nerve to tell me to cut back on the coffee,” Shane accuses.

“Well, did you?” he asks.

“I did, actually,” the profiler admits, “Switched to decaf for a day and slept like a baby.”

“Alrighty then, I can serve you,” Ryan says, hopping down from his stool.

Shane quirks a brow. “Were you going to cut me off if I hadn’t?”

“Someone’s gotta look out for you, big guy.”

“You’re all heart,” Shane deadpans.

Without asking for his order, Ryan dips behind the espresso machine and starts fiddling with the settings.

“So while I’ve got you here,” Ryan says after a pause. “And not that I want to sound like a tin-hatter or anything -

“Oh, that’s always a promising start to any question,” Shane interjects.

“ - but I have to know: JFK, total inside job, right?”

Shane snorts, his dismissive air betrayed by the corner of his mouth turning upwards into one of his first genuine smiles in days.  

“Hey c’mon Shane, don’t be like that, we’re friends right?”

“We’re certainly something,” Shane agrees. “You’re the weird guy who keeps following me around talking about all your spooky nonsense.”

“Hey, hey,” Ryan says, throwing his hands up, “In my defence you’re the one that first asked about aliens and you started interrogating me about Bigfoot when you were - when I saw you the other night. If you ask me, I’d say you’re the one obsessed with spooky nonsense.”

“My god,” Shane breathes, eyes wide and clutching a hand to his chest in disbelief. “What have I become?”

“You’ve got the vision now,” Ryan cackles, sprinkling a spicy-smelling powder into Shane’s drink. “We can talk about something else - you catch the Lakers game last week?” 

“I know, uh, literally nothing about sport. I care so little about it I almost wish I knew what the - the, ah, Lakers were so I could honestly tell you exactly how little they mean to me.”

Ryan is staring at him, a teaspoon hanging loose from his fingertips.

“Are they a football team?” Shane prompts.

The other man flips on the milk steamer and starts doing something complicated with the resulting foam, his expression unreadable. “So, JFK?” he finally asks.

“Mm?”

“I promise it’ll just stay between us, I’m not going to be leaking FBI secrets onto _Citizen Sleuths_ -”

_“_ Is that where the rest of your friends are?”

“-it’s just professional curiosity, ya know? There’s just so many unanswered questions, like uh, what was the babushka lady doing? Was she filming something and if so, why didn’t she come forward? Or, uh...oh! Did the umbrella man -

“The umbrella man!” Shane exclaims in delight.

“-really have a gun in his - wait, did the umbrella man actually have something to do with it?” Ryan asks in disbelief.

“How would I know? I just like the name.”

Ryan’s resulting sigh sounds as if he personally held Shane responsible for all the injustices in the world. “Did Lyndon B. Johnson do it? Tell me he wasn’t that much of a dumb dumb that he bragged about the hit to his illicit arm-charm - he didn’t do it, did he?”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Shanes waves for Ryan to be quiet and leans across the espresso machine to stare at the other man. “Now I need for you promise me that what I’m about to tell you goes no further than this room. If I’m going to be giving out super-classified government secrets I want to know you’re not going to go blabbing about it to your little newspaper friends.”  

“Shit, I mean, of course! I won’t say - my lips are sealed,” Ryan rushes to reassure the taller man, cutting the milk steamer so silence fills the room.

“Alright then,” Shane closes the distance between the two men until their faces are just inches apart, “JFK wasn’t shot, his head just...did that.”

It takes Ryan a moment to process Shane’s remark and then he doubles over, wheezing with laughter.

“Holy shit! You really had me going there, I can’t believe I thought you were about to tell me who killed JFK,” he gasps between fits of laughter.

Shane can’t help but join in. “You should - should’ve seen your face,” he laughs. “Do you know what you’d see if you looked up ‘gullible’ in the dictionary?”

“A picture of my face?”

“What? No, the definition of gullible, which you are!”

“Shut up, Shane." 

_17 days to go_

“A press conference is not a good idea right now, Chief.” Shane is standing in the centre of Chief Cooper’s small office, his arms folded across his chest and sweat trickling down his back.

Cooper wasn’t looking at the FBI agent, methodically signing off the chain of custody forms which spilled across his desk. A box fan was buzzing noisily on the spare chair. Cooper’s phone lay off its hook, the dial tone muffled by his wide brimmed hat.

“We’ve given enough time over to your revenge theory and it’s done nothing but tie up resources and upset a lot of people,” Cooper replies, “I’ve got to do my job, and my job is to reassure the public that everything is okay.”

“And to actually catch the unsub.”

Cooper’s hand reflexively clenches around his pen. “Yes. But I’ve got a responsibility to this community, it’s the height of the tourism season, okay? And since Tracy Velour, god rest her soul, my phone hasn’t stopped ringing from half the town bitchin’ that all their business is drying up because people are scared to come here!”

“Then release a statement to the media. Look, this case is at a really critical junction - we know the unsub is actively monitoring the media for any mention of themselves,” Shane explains, punctuating each point with a wave of his hands. “We have to control the message and we can’t do that in a press conference, it’ll be a complete circus and we don’t know how the unsub will react.”  

“Agent Madej, do I tell you how to do your job?” Chief Cooper shoves his chair back and rises, his pen still clenched in his fist. “You’ve been treading on my goddamn toes since you got here and I’ve had just about enough of it.”

Shane exhales a steadying breath. “Bryan, I’m here as a courtesy because your department requested FBI assistance. We’re on the same side here, but since your unsub hasn’t crossed state lines this is still your case so I can only offer you advice - and my advice is that this press conference is a bigger mistake than the Mayor from _Jaws_ keeping the beach open after the shark ate that kid.”

Cooper reels back and hurls his pen at the wall, barely missing Shane who doesn’t flinch. “Let’s just agree to disagree then,” Shane continues, unperturbed. “Just please keep me out of it, the FBI can’t formally comment on active cases.”  

“Sure,” the other man replies, brushing past Shane to pick up his pen, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

_16 days to go_

It was five minutes before Cooper’s press conference was due to start and there wasn’t enough chairs.

Officer Jen Ruggirello, being criminally underused as per usual, had been assigned to prepare the room - leaving half of Tellridge station awkwardly standing around their desks as she commandeered more and more chairs to accommodate the increasing number of reporters clustered in the room. Local and national press had been trickling into town all week and even Shane was taken aback by the number of cameras and microphones pointed at the front of the room where Jen had hastily covered up Shane’s murder board by tacking up a large state flag (Tellridge apparently didn’t own a lectern for such affairs).

He takes up a position against the wall at the side of the room and spots Ryan sitting stock-still at the end of the front row of chairs, seemingly undisturbed by the hive of activity swirling around him. Apparently sensing that someone was watching him, the young man turns slightly in his seat, scanning the room until his eyes meet Shane’s and he smiles.

He waves a hand at Shane and gestures towards the front of the room, silently asking if the other man was about to address the assembled press; Shane shakes his head and points towards Chief Cooper, who’d just swept into the room, wearing his tightest button-up for the occasion, and takes his place in front of the cluster of microphones.

To his credit, Cooper makes it through the start of the press conference with little difficulty - reassuring the public the police were doing everything they can, the town was still safe blah blah blah, condolences to the victims’ families, yada yada if the tourists could please keep coming to the town and spending money that’d be great.

Predictably, the wheels start to come off once Cooper opens up the floor to questions and a sea of hands shoot into the air.

“Do you have any suspects at this time?” someone asks.

“We’re, uh, working on a number of possible leads that we’re pretty confident will result in an arrest shortly.”

Shane raises an eyebrow, this was news to him.

The journalist isn’t satisfied. “Okay, but at this stage you must have an idea of who you’re looking for, can you share it with the public?”

“Well,” Cooper hedges, “Ya see, we recently had to bring the FBI onto the case and they’ve been providing assistance to help us profile the suspect so they’d be best placed to tell you - where’s special agent Madej? Ah, there he is, Shane come up here and talk to these nice folks.”

“Oh you fuck,” Shane hisses under his breath, pressing his lips together in a grimace to keep further curses from spilling out as every head in the room turns to look at him.

There’s a long, awkward moment where Shane remains glued to the wall like a petulant teenager, refusing to move, while Cooper stands at the front with his arm outstretched and pointing at Shane. He can hear the rapid-fire click of camera shutters and hopes none of the news crews are broadcasting live. It’s only after Cooper begins beckoning to Shane like he’s some kind of skittish animal that the profiler is able to convince his legs carry him up to stand by the police chief’s side, who immediately peels away, leaving Shane alone to face the scrutiny of the nation’s media.

The weight of forty pairs of eyes staring at him pins Shane down and leaves him lost for words. He coughs, trying to ease the tightness that was squeezing his throat shut; his hands flex agitatedly before he shoves them deep into his pockets.

“Um, right” he finally manages to grit out. “You need to know that profiles take some time to build and they’re constantly changing based on -" 

“-sorry can you speak up please?” a voice calls from the back of the room.

“Oh! Sorry, um,” Shane lifts his eyes from the ground and finds himself focusing on Ryan, who’s nodding encouragingly. The gesture was a familiar one, reminding him of late afternoons working through the backlog of cases with the Quantico team, and the stiffness in his shoulders eases.

“What I can confidently tell you is that this unsub is highly intelligent and organised,” Shane states, slipping into the familiar, steady manner of speaking he uses when trying to convey his observations to others. “They’ll be a local and will be so integrated in the community, you wouldn’t be able to picture them as a threat. They’ll be very charming and will be able to gain trust easily.”

Out of the corner of his eye Shane sees someone gesticulating wildly -  it’s Chief Cooper, standing just out of view of the cameras, and frantically slashing his hand under his throat in the universal ‘cut it out’ gesture.

“And, uh, that’s all we’ve got at the moment, thank you,” Shane hastily concludes and books it towards the back of the room, passing Ryan who makes an aborted gesture as if he’d just been about to reach out to try and stop Shane leaving.

“What the fuck was that?” Cooper hisses as Shane brushes past him and out into the afternoon.

_15 days to go_

“Couldn’t help but notice you were on the news last night.”

Shane is standing in the narrow alley that ran behind the station, his back pressed against the wall and the sun beating down on the back of his neck as he cradles his cellphone to his ear. 1,700 miles away, Special Agent-in-Charge Ray Walters is gearing up to chew him out.

The profiler makes a non-committal noise at the back of his throat and hears the older man sigh. Shane can picture it clearly; Ray - in his office with the door closed because he believes yelling at his team in front of other people is unprofessional - probably pacing and gripping one of the stress balls his daughters give him for Father’s Day every year.

“Do you mind telling me why you think you’re so special that our policies don’t apply to you?” Ray is using his I’m-not-mad-I’m-disappointed voice which never fails to make Shane’s stomach turn.

“I don’t, I was - none of that was my idea,” Shane argues, “The police chief put me on the spot and it would’ve looked far worse if I refused to say anything.”

“And you didn’t think to tell the local PD that we don’t comment on active cases?”

“Yes! I made that crystal clear to them - Ray, this case is being so poorly handled, the lead detective is refusing to listen to anyone that disagrees with him and Chief Cooper is just pushing his own agenda because he’s as small minded as his -”

“- Special agent Madej!” Ray bellows, the connection crackling from the pitch of his voice. “Try to have at least an iota of professionalism! Jesus Christ, Shane - do you even know how much pushback I got about sending you into the field without supervision? Do you?”

Ray seems to be waiting for an answer and Shane sighs. “No?”

“A whole lot. The higher ups told me I was crazy, but I stuck with it because I believed you were capable of handling yourself and now all I’m hearing is you’re getting into petty shit with the locals.”

“Ray I’m-”

“I don’t want to hear any more excuse, Madej. You’re with the Federal Bureau for God’s sake, you’re meant to be assisting and guiding the local police in whatever manner they need. Do your damn job. I will not have this conversation with you again.”

_14 days to go_

Shane avoids going into the station the next day. His brief stint as FBI spokesperson had set off a chain reaction within Tellridge which had further inundated the besieged police station with hundreds of armchair detectives calling in to incriminate their neighbours. Anyone with a college degree was apparently fair game and Chief Cooper had taken to looking at Shane with barely contained rage.

That, along with Ray’s dressing-down still ringing in his ears, was enough to make the notion of stepping back into the shoes of a killer sound incredibly attractive.  

Shane drives to the house that Maria O’Hara shared with her fiancé with half-formed plans to retrace the route she took on her final evening walk. He parks near the modest single-storey house bordered by ash trees with a dirt path that lead beyond the house and through to parkland, and stands on the sidewalk, flipping through the casefile to orientate himself.

“Hey Shane,” says a voice somewhere to his left, taking him by surprise. Ryan Bergara is sitting under the shade of the largest tree closest to the dirt path, his legs stretched out with notebooks and camera parts scattered around him. His press pass hangs prominently on display around his neck.

“Really?” Shane asks in disbelief, “You’re here to harass a murder victim’s grieving loved ones? I thought you were more of a class act than that, Bergara.”

“Not according to my editor,” Ryan shrugs. “But I’ve been knocking for nearly half an hour and no answer, hang on, I’ll try again.”

He extends a closed first outwards and raps smartly on the grass; he tilts his head, listening for a moment before shaking his head. “Darn, no one home. Don’t worry though, big guy, I’m going to stake this one out.”

Ryan laces his fingers behind his head and reclines against the tree trunk. “You can join me if you like?”

Shane hesitates for a moment, glancing between the open casefile in his hands and Ryan, before tucking the file under his arm and dropping down onto the grass. Carefully avoiding the littering of expensive camera pieces, he loosens his collar and tilts his head back to feel the sunlight filtering through the leaves on his face.

“So is this a special FBI profiling technique, or are you just playing hooky?” Ryan asks after some time had passed.

“Why do we have to put a label on everything?” Shane retorts, “Can’t a guy just sit under a tree all day when he’s meant to be at work?”

“So playing hooky then?”

Shane doesn’t answer.

The silence grows and fills the space between them, enveloping the bird calls and passing traffic, until Shane’s tapping a finger against his wrist to alleviate the heaviness of the moment.

“Bryan Cooper is quite a character, isn’t he?” Ryan suddenly remarks, apropos of nothing. 

“Hell of a guy,” Shane agrees, not entirely willing to be drawn on the subject.

“That being said,” Ryan turns to look at the other man, “What he did to you the other day at the press conference was shitty - putting you on the spot like that and then freaking out when you did what he told you to do - I saw him waving his arms around - you didn’t deserve that, you were just trying to do your job.”

“Part of the perks of the gig, I guess, can’t be all car chases and arresting bad guys,” Shane says.

“Yeah well, you deserve better.”

Shane’s about to ask Ryan what he means when he’s distracted by his phone vibrating with an incoming call. He answers and Ryan watches as the other man’s face slowly closes down, his brows knitting together as he rubs a hand over his jaw. The profiler replies in the affirmative twice, then hangs up without farewelling the other person; he gets to his feet with a groan.

“They catch you skipping class?” Ryan asks.

“In a manner of speaking, I’ve got to go back in - they’ve arrested a suspect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The technique Ryan is using at the O'Hara house is known in the business as 'knocking on grass' where journalists literally knock on the grass rather than attempt to interview subjects - particularly if said interview subjects are being asked to relive a traumatic event. 
> 
> Thank you for reading this chapter, it's a long one, and if you liked it please leave some kudos or a comment - I love hearing your thoughts. 
> 
> And as always, you can chat to me on my tumblr hey-there-ghouls


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A suspect causes headaches for Shane as he makes a new ally and the tensions with the local police force reaches a fever pitch.

_13 days to go_

In Shane’s line of work he’d witnessed a never-ending parade of disturbing sights which would linger long after he’d traded in his badge for a rocking chair with all the other crotchety pensioners in the retirement village.  

A spree killer who’d flayed his neighbours after slitting their throats, discarding their skin to one side like unwanted pelt. Entrails slowly rotating from a ceiling fan after a particularly violent disemboweling. A woman screaming as her world ended while being carried away from a crime scene where her only child lay still under a sheet.

But the most unexpected one, the one which balled itself up and set tight against his chest, burning with discontent, was the sight of Chief Bryan Cooper and Detective Mark Reader on their third victory lap of the day.

This briefing was entirely unnecessary.

Nothing had changed since yesterday when the suspect, a man by the name of Clint Hampton, had been brought in for questioning after being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Maria O’Hara.

Yet here Shane was, sitting on a table at the back of the room, elbows resting on his knees with Jen seated beside him on her phone. Cooper and Reader were strutting around like prized hens in front of Shane’s whiteboard, its countdown replaced with the limited information they had on the suspect which interconnected with flourishing red lines.

Shane detested the pageantry and backpatting which always happened following an arrest. Normally by the time a suspect was in custody he was already several drinks in at the dive bar around the corner from Quantico, waiting for the court summons to arrive in his inbox. But the hows and whys weren’t connecting, ensnaring the profiler’s doubts and ensuring he wasn’t going anywhere for the time being.

“This is a win, people, this is a win,” Cooper was saying, bouncing exuberantly on the balls of his feet. “This is what good police work looks like.”

“It was a lucky stop and frisk,” Shane mutters under his breath, drawing a sidelong glance from Jen.

Cooper and Reader had taken the initial profile Shane had given under duress and run in the opposite direction, deploying the might of Tellridge’s police force in a targeted sweep over the area’s sizeable homeless population.

Its spoils were being proudly brandished before the assembled officers in a clear plastic evidence bag that Reader was waving above his head like a deadbeat dad at a strip club on payday - a faint glint of gold barely catching in the fluorescent lighting.

“This is the key to nailing that son-of-a-bitch,” Reader crows for the upteenth time today.

“Alright, alright,” Cooper says, waving for the other man to bring the celebrations to an end. “Let’s recap what we know so far.”

He gestures to a mugshot of the suspect which had been taped to the centre of the whiteboard, wagging his finger as he ticks off each point. “This is Clint Hampton, 37 years old, no fixed address, no major priors before now - just a slate of loitering and public intoxication charges.”

“Now, when we searched Hampton we located this,” Cooper continues, signalling for Reader to begin his brandishing duties anew. “For those up the back, it’s a 24-carat gold women's necklace with a sapphire encrusted crucifix.”

_It’s also incredibly ugly_ Shane thinks, stifling a yawn as Cooper looks his way.

“Showing excellent initiative, Detective Reader detained the suspect and spoke with Tracy Velour and Maria O’Hara’s families,” Cooper explains as Reader takes a mock bow.  “Maria’s fiancé was able to identify the necklace as a gift that his mother had given Maria after their engagement - he didn’t immediately notice it was missing because she didn’t wear it too often.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Jen agrees without looking up from her phone.

“Now when we questioned Hampton about the origins of the necklace, he didn’t deny that it belonged to Maria -”

“-Idiot actually had the stones to claim that she _gave_ it to him,” cackles Reader, earning an irritated look from the Chief who was clearly enjoying being the one with all the answers for a change.

“So anyway,” Cooper rallies, “The necklace and the fact that Tracy Velour did a lot of work with the homeless community gave us enough leeway to put Hampton on a 48-hour old. The good news is he hasn’t requested a lawyer. The bad news is he clammed up and is refusing to answer any further questions. We’ve got another 6 hours to get a confession out of him, so if anyone has any ideas I’m all ears.”

Silence and uncomfortable shuffling answered the Chief’s request, as if he’d asked for the answer to a particularly difficult equation and no one wanted to be called upon.

“How’d he get Maria O’Hara’s body over to that tree? I thought we were thinking the killer would need a car to do it?” Jen asks, her voice loud and clear.

Incredibly, Cooper ignores the young officer, looking through her as if she wasn’t there while he scanned the otherwise all-male faces of the room. Undaunted, she slides her phone back into her neatly pressed pants, scooches forward on the desk, and sticks her hand straight up into the air which she waves eagerly like an overexcited kindergartner.

When Cooper continues to overlook Jen, Shane follows suit - throwing his arm up into the air and locking eyes with the older man who immediately calls on him.

“Special agent Madej. I figured you’d have plenty to say about this,” Cooper says, the corner of his mouth turning upwards into a smirk.

“I’m good actually,” Shane says breezily, “Well no, there’s, uh - I’ve got a whole heap of issues with all this, but I’m more interested in what Officer Ruggirello has to say.”

Taking her cue, Jen erupts into speech like water bursting from a dam. “Okay so, um, I was just wondering why Hampton would’ve taken a trophy from O’Hara and not anyone else - even if his MO was evolving, then he should’ve taken something from Velour. And the - ah, car thing makes no sense because without a car he’s got no way of getting the first victim and O’Hara to their dump sites.”

“Then you’ve got the latest crime scene, I thought the coroner said the killer would need a whole heap of medical equipment to completely drain Velour of her blood - right?” she directs this aside to Shane, who nods, “So where he’d get all that equipment from? Where he’d stash it? He couldn’t have stolen it because we would’ve heard about that.”

“Well, Officer Ruggirello, if you’d been actually listening you would’ve heard me say that he’s not answering questions so that makes it a bit hard to clear that all up,” Cooper says once Jen finally runs out of steam, condescension curling around his words. “Now unless anyone has anything actually useful to add, get to work - Ruggirello, a word please.”

The room empties out while Jen, with a resigned look on her face, trudges up to join her two superior officers in front of the whiteboard. Shane lingers in the doorway while the trio appear to briefly argue before Jen falls silent, her arms crossed over her chest and nodding occasionally while staring at the ground. Eventually Chief Cooper dismisses the junior officer with a pat on the shoulder after pushing something into her hand.

Shane falls into step beside her as she stalks from the room, allowing Jen a moment to compose herself before saying: “Sorry if I got you into trouble, you’re completely right, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” she agrees easily, running her hand through her hair until it stands on all ends. “The hard part is trying to get them to actually listen to me - ya know when I started here I had to threaten that I was going to call the union before they’d let me wear pants? Yeah! They last female officer they had here was in the 70s. 

“Why stay here then?” Shane asks, bewildered.

Jen shrugs. “The college here has one of the best music programs in the country and my girlfriend’s been promised a sweet gig at the conservatorium after she gets her degree. I can be a cop anywhere, I don’t mind waiting out one kinda sucky job for her.”

The pair come to a standstill in the middle of the bullpen, Jen jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “I gotta head out, Chief wants me to get him and Reader coffee while they interrogate Hampton again - at least they gave me a twenty this time.”

She holds up a crumpled note that’d been clenched in her fist, which Shane quickly grabs.

“Nah - I mean, you could if you wanted to,” he says, holding the bill up to the light, inspecting it as if checking for forgeries. “Or, you could help me do some real police work.” 

When Jen doesn’t immediately protest or try to retrieve the Chief’s money by cracking him across the back of knees with her expandable baton, Shane continues, “Look, all we know about Hampton at the moment could fit on a stamp with room to spare - I want this to be over as much as the next person, but I want to get the _right_ guy. The last thing we need right now is to go to the press with a suspect and then someone gets murked and we lose whatever trust the public has in us -”

“ - Chief had me send a memo to the press this morning saying we had a suspect in custody,” Jen interrupts, chagrined.

“Oh for fuck’s sa - Okay! I’m gonna edit down the inspirational speech - ah, you’re the only person here with a brain - _I can’t believe he went to the press without telling me, Jesus Christ_ \- sorry, right - you’re wasted on coffee runs and with your instincts I think you’d actually find something useful on Hampton - no one’s a ghost, there’s gotta be something out there...so you get digging, and if anyone asks you what you’re doing tell ‘em the annoying FBI guy made you do it, deal?”

Jen’s grin was threatening to split her face in two as she grabbed Shane’s extended hand and shook it. “Deal! I won’t let you down, but uh, what are you going to be doing?”

The trace of amusement on Shane’s face faded. “I’m going to go make sure your bosses aren’t violating the suspect’s Miranda rights.”

As it turns out, the profiler needn’t have worried. Tellridge’s best and brightest had never grappled with anything more complicated than surely teenagers who vandalised the statue in the town center and cracked as soon as someone threatened to call their parents. Hampton, who’d sat in silence after giving an initial statement thirty hours ago, was an entire different kettle of fish and Cooper and Reader were running out of ideas.

Sitting behind the glass two way mirror, Shane watches as the two men alter between menacing and outright threatening the suspect. It seemed neither of them had gotten the message about how the good cop/bad cop routine was supposed to work, so both of them were trying to outdo each other for the role of ‘bad cop’. Other than a few brief periods where Hampton had been left alone in the room, the man had been denied the opportunity to sleep - it was taking its toll, Hampton was blinking frequently, occasionally listing to one side like a tree caught in a strong breeze, as if the very act of staying upright was taking monumental energy.

“This feels like a bad remake of _‘Making a Murderer’_ ” Shane grumbles to himself, grimacing as he took a pull of the station’s dishwater coffee.

“What was that?” says a voice from the doorway.

Turning, Shane sees Jen, brimming with such high energy that it passes through her like a live wire as she shifts from foot to foot whilst clutching a manila folder.

“That was fast,” he comments.

“Really?” Jen queries, looking pleased, “I thought I was taking too long - it’s been two hours.”

“Has it?” Shane asks, looking back towards the clock above the door. “Huh. Time flies when you’re watching the _Keystone Cops_.”

“I’m too young for for that reference,” Jen says, joining Shane by the mirror to hand over the folder. “I found what I could, there’s some school records, stuff from his group home, and reports from when he was being treated for alcohol poisoning, but it’s like he dropped off the face of the earth after he turned thirty.”

Shane pages through Jen’s research; despite her modesty she’d done good work, pulling in details from the previous cases alongside press clippings and information on Hampton dating back to grade school - she’d even bound the report, which was, frankly, adorable.

The profiler pauses on a particular page, rereads it, flicks over to the next page and then back again. “His school records stop at the ninth grade,” he finally says.

“Yeah I noticed that,” Jen agrees. “Unless he changed his name or was homeschooled, that’s when he disappeared from county records.”

Shane stares thoughtfully at the folder for a moment, then reaches over to rap on the glass. The trio in the interrogation room looks up at the commotion, but neither detective moves towards the door. An impassive expression on his face, Shane continues to hammer on the mirror, like a door-to-door salesman about to meet his quota, until Cooper’s patience finally gives and he storms out.

“Agent Madej. Of course that was you - what is so important that you had to interrupt us when we were on the verge of a breakthrough?”

“Gotta talk to him,” Shane says, flipping the folder closed and starting towards the door, only to be blocked by the Chief.

“That’s not happening,” Cooper barks, “This is our suspect. Our collar. Our hard work. You just want to swoop in at the last minute and take all the credit.”

Shane barely manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes, his ability to tolerate this small cop posturing having eroded long ago.

“Yeah, no,” he says. “Chief, I’ve got exactly zero interest in taking any kudos for this case. It’s all yours, baby! We both want the same thing here...for me to leave, and guess what? Once I sign off on Hampton as our unsub you will never see me again. You can be in all the headlines and Tellridge can throw a parade in your honour!”

“But,” Shane continues, calmer. “I can’t do that until I verify Hampton is actually our unsub, and to do that, I gotta talk to him. It’s standard procedure and my boss isn’t going to let me bend on this one because it’s going to cause a massive headache for us if this isn’t airtight.”

The profiler looked to the older man who seemed distracted, his mind already on the ticker tape parade and the red carpet that’d be rolled out for him. Cooper jerks the interrogation room door open again, beckoning out Reader.

“You’ve got thirty minutes,” the Chief tells Shane, “If he doesn’t give you anything by then it’s back over to us. 

Shane brushes past a waspish Reader, stepping through the threshold to come face to face with the prime suspect in this string of horrific murders. Behind him, as the door swung shut, Shane faintly heard: “Hey, where’s our coffee?”

Life had not been kind to Mr Hampton. He may have been handsome once, although it was difficult to tell with the layers of grime which marked his face. His face was weatherworn, covered with so many freckles that his face was brown with small pale spaces here and there, like blades of grass struggling to show through the deadened leaves of autumn. His hair was straggly and straw-like, nearly fossilised it was so dry. His hard, deep-set eyes stared Shane down, laying all blame for his misfortunes at the profiler’s feet.

“Hey Clint,” Shane greets, moving to sit opposite the other man. “Before we start, are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”

Hampton blinks, pulling the taller man into focus with great difficulty yet remaining silent.

“You’re good?” Shane asks, taking Hampton’s silence as an answer, “Okay, my name’s Shane, I’m a profiler with the FBI and my job is to, basically, identify suspects for a crime based on their motivations and patterns - which is why I’m talking to you right now.” 

Hampton continues to stare at him blankly. 

“You know,” Shane says lightly, leaning back in his chair, “I love a good recalcitrant attitude, and you’re really making it work for you - not a lot of people can pull that off so well.” 

The other man tilts his head slightly. “What does that mean?” he asks, his voice faint and rusty from lack of use. 

“Recalcitrant? It’s, uh, a fancy way of saying you’re being rebellious. One of my teachers used it in my report card and I looked it up because it sounded like a fun word,” Shane explains.

When Hampton nods thoughtfully, the profiler continues, “So I know you’ve been over this a dozen times and you’re probably sick of talking about it, but I’d like you to tell me one more time how you ended up with the necklace.”

Hampton sighs before hunching forward, his hands splayed out flat on the table. “Like I told your buddies before, she gave it to me,” he says in exasperation, his fingers tapping on the tabletop to punctuate each word.

“Okay I hear ya,” Shane says kindly. “But you have to agree it sounds kinda odd that a woman would give you, a stranger, a really expensive piece of jewelry. I mean, you gotta give me something else here, man - was she was feeling really charitable or, or did it really make your eyes pop?”

“God no,” Hampton chuckles mirthlessly, “Have you seen that thing, it looked terrible - that necklace was really-”

“-too much?” Shane finishes with a smile.

“Yeah!” the other man enthuses, brightening somewhat. “That’s what she said when she gave it to me, how’d you know that?”

Shane frowns. “Wait, you and Maria talked about the necklace?”

Hampton hums in the affirmative. “She was a real sweetheart, you know most people who get all charitable with folk like me are usually doing it because they want to feel better about themselves, but she always seemed like she was genuinely interested in what I was doing - we had good talks.”

“You two speak often?” Shane prompts when Hampton seems as if he’s about to lapse back into silence.

“Almost every day,” the other man shrugs. “I like my routine so I’m in the same place most days and she’d come jogging past and then sit down with me. I’d ask her how the wedding was going and she’d try to help me get some work, cause, you know, it was getting hard to find anythin’, cause with the summer coming all the kids and tourists were taking the kind of jobs I’d normally do.”

Shane’s discreetly taking notes, attempting to keep up with the flow of words Hampton was letting forth after maintaining his silence for so long.

“Then one day she comes by all pissed off because her mother-in-law was on her case about wearing this necklace for her wedding as her ‘somethin’ blue’, or whatever,” Hampton continues. “It was a present from the in-laws but she hated the thing and couldn’t think of a reason not to wear it.”

“Then she was like ‘Clint, what if I gave it to you’ and I was like ‘well Maria I don’t reckon it’d look good on me’”, the man tips in his chair from side to side, mimicking the exchange. “Then she tells me she wants me to have it so I can sell it and get the money to go to California like I always wanted to and she can tell everyone she lost it.”

“But you didn’t sell it?” Shane asks, stating the obvious.

“Nah, I was waitin’ for her to give me that, that - um, what’s that thing called that tells everyone that things are all legit?” 

“Like a certificate of authenticity?” Shane suggests, perplexed.

“Yeah that’d be it,” Hampton agrees. “I was waitin’ for that but she didn’t show up one day and then I got sick so I was wasn’t at the park like usual - next thing I know, one of my buddies is telling me they found the librarian stuffed in a tree.”

The older man turns his palms upwards to hold them out towards Shane. “What was I meant to do? Go to the cops and tell ‘em that she gave it to me out of the goodness of her own heart? I knew how this all looked. I’m real sad that she died, but I didn’t kill her.”

Shane remains silent for a moment, contemplating his next move. “So you only heard about Maria’s death from your friend, you didn’t read about it?”

“Nah.”

“What about the other victims?”

“Like them other two guys? Never seen ‘em myself but I heard it all through the grapevine - this isn’t a big town, people’ll talk to just about anybody.”

“What about Tracy Velour?” Shane prompts, drumming his fingers on his folder. “The most recent victim?”

Hampton’s demeanour shifts from spirited to cagey, his shoulders drawing upwards as he hunches down in his chair. “Don’t know anything about it, nobody told me nothin’ - only what you lot told me, I’ve been avoiding people ever since Maria died.”

“Ah, see now I’m confused,” Shane says, flipping open the folder to extract a clipping of Ryan’s article - Tracy Velour’s face splashed prominently across the page - and slides it over towards Hampton. “Because, see, it says - uh - right here that Tracy did a lot of outreach work for the homeless, so you should know her.”

The older man doesn’t move to look at the article Shane pushes towards him, his expression closed off and weary. The profiler lets the silence hang between them for a long moment, before drawing the clipping back and producing a ballpoint pen from his pocket which he rolls between his fingertips.

“Maybe I’m wrong - that’s okay, how ‘bout you read, uh,” he quickly circles a paragraph and flicks the paper forward, “That part? That’ll tell you all you need to know. 

Hampton remains still for several minutes, looking between Shane and Ryan’s article as if it were a loaded gun. Eventually he reaches out to grasp the paper and lifts it up to angle it towards the light. He stays that way for several more long heartbeats, his eyes roaming over the page but lacking the rapid left-to-right movement that normally accompanied reading. 

“Out loud, please,” Shane cajoles.

“Uh, it s-says -it says that she - uh, Tracey helped the homeless with the - ah - soup ki-kitchen every week,” Hampton stutters, seemingly losing the sentence mid-way through before rushing towards the end.

Shane sighs, brows drawing together in light concern as he leans forward to run a finger down the circled paragraph. “It doesn’t actually, it says that she liked to entertain _in_ the kitchen, but nothing about the soup kitchen - nothing about her work with the homeless at all, just community service.”

“Oh,” responds Hampton, his voice small. “Must’ve read it wrong.”

“You read a lot of things wrong, Clint?” Shane asks sympathetically. “The letters jump around a lot, yeah?”

Hampton barely lifts his head from where he’s staring at his clasped hands, nodding ever so slightly. Shane quickly stands, gathering up the papers to shove them haphazardly into the folder and heading towards the door.

“Thanks Clint, you’ve been a big help,” Shane says, opening the door. “Officer Ruggirello, could you grab something for Mr Hampton to eat?”

“No,” Chief Cooper says flatly, stepping right into Shane’s personal space as he made a failed attempt to prevent Jen from sidling past and out into the bullpen. “No food for perps.” 

“Okay, first of all starving people in police custody is generally frowned upon,” Shane replies, juking around Cooper. “And secondly, that’s not your perp. Hampton isn’t the unsub - he has dyslexia, he can’t read.”

“What in the hell does that have to do with literally anything?” Cooper asks in exasperation as Reader huffs with laughter from where he’s lent against the wall.

“Tracy Velour’s death was motivated by her husband’s work at the paper - the unsub felt slighted by what Jay Velour was writing about them and so they chose their next victim to ensure they got attention,” Shane explains. “Clint Hampton couldn’t read Ryan Bergara’s article and his school records show he was diagnosed with reading difficulties back in seventh grade.”

“He’s faking,” Cooper argues, crossing his arms over his chest.

“He was going off verbal clues to fill the gaps, he didn’t have a clue what was in front of him” Shane retorts, “Plus, he knew the necklace was a gift from the mother-in-law and Maria’s fiancé is on record stating she was sick with a virus three days before her death which matches up with Hampton’s version of events. He’s not your guy.” 

“You’re just mad that you didn’t find him first,” Reader snaps, shoving away from the wall to storm across the room towards Shane. “You’re ruining our case so you don’t look bad in front of your boss - especially after that shit you pulled at the Velour house.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Shane says, tension stiffening his spine. “You gave me time to determine if Hampton was your unsub, he’s not - we need to move on.”

“You stuck up piece of -”

“ -so tired of the level of unprof-”

“-Special agent Madej, I swear to God - “

“Shane.”

A quiet voice cuts through the cacophony of the three men on the brink of an all-out argument. In the doorway stands Jen, her face ashen and her knuckles white where she’s clutching door frame.

The air rushes out of the room with a gust. With dreaded certainty, Shane already knows the words that will come out Jen’s mouth before she has the chance to speak.

“They’ve found another body.”

_0 days to go_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The depiction of dyslexia in this chapter is based one person's particular experience, it's not an indication of everyone's experience with the condition and was written with extensive consultation with an education specialist - I've done my best to mitigate any mistakes but please feel free to message me if you'd like to talk over Clint Hampton's story. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading - this was quite a talky chapter but we'll be diving right back into the action soon. If you liked what you read, please leave a kudos or a comment - they really mean the whole world to me. 
> 
> And as always, you can come chat to me on tumblr @hey-there-ghouls


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new crime scene brings Shane closer to the killer than ever before. Jen has a brilliant idea, and Shane has a breakthrough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned this chapter contains graphic descriptions of a crime scene and a deceased person. There is also a discussion of gun violence and mass shootings in this chapter - if you find that distressing, please skip the second paragraph (you won't miss anything). Finally because this isn't your grandparents Buzzfeed Unsolved, there's f-bombs aplenty in this chapter.

The press are already waiting at the crime scene by the time they arrive.

Long gone were the days when news stories of a madman with a gun contained enough titillating details to get eyeballs on pages. With mass shootings occurring around the country almost every single day, violence had been relegated to page ten, behind the latest political scandals and celebrity news - so dryly factual in their understated way that the general public had adopted a sardonic nonchalance towards death.

But you stuff one pretty young woman in a tree and suddenly everyone is buying newspapers again.

Shane was completely unused to dealing with this level of media scrutiny. Whenever he consulted on high-profile cases he normally was kept well out of sight, slipping through the back door while Freddie fronted the press with hands on hips. It had gotten so intense that the profiler had taken to jogging down the stairs in the mornings to avoid being trapped in 30-second elevator interviews with the reporters camped out at the hotel.

Seeing them all gathered there, their cameras and microphones swivelling towards Shane’s rental car in unison, was enough to give the profiler pause. Cooper and Reader elbow past him, moving in to assist the two responding officers who were attempting crowd control.  

They were the first ones on the scene. After the call had come through there’d been a frantic scramble to gets cars on the road; the forensics team was still enroute after having to swing past the coroner’s house where he was watching a baseball game with his family, two squad cars were tied up at a domestic disturbance at a cookout, and Shane’s standoff with Tellridge’s most senior officers had relocated to his rental after Cooper’s car failed to start.

The drive over had been made in complete silence. Reader was at the wheel, his toxic masculinity prohibiting him from sitting in the back. Cooper rode shotgun with Shane and Jen in the rear; the two men had attempted to prevent the young woman from attending the scene until Shane had physically taken his keys off Reader and refused to move until they capitulated. As was often the case with awkward silences, Shane fought the urge to talk the entirety of the journey, alternating between castigating ( _I warned you not to antagonise the unsub_ ) and idle chit-chat ( _Oh hey you guys have a McDonald’s here_ ).

“What should we be doing?” Jen asks. She hadn’t joined her superior officers, choosing instead to hoover behind Shane with her attention turned entirely towards the two-storey house with the oak panelled front door whose edges showed recent signs of being forced open with a standard-issue crowbar.

“Right now?” Shane responds rhetorically, half twisting at the waist to look up the dark cobblestone drive where the squad car was parked; it’s pulsing red and blue lights casting a strange hue over the scene. “We go in, don’t touch anything, and try to get as much as we can from the room before forensics takes control of the scene. This is the freshest scene I’ve had access to since getting here so we can’t afford to, uh -”

He trails off, momentarily losing his train of thought as he catches sight of the familiar form of Ryan Bergara at the forefront of the press pack. The other man was in his element, confident in the way one always was on home turf surrounded by interlopers, his usual outfit of a camera and notebook abandoned in favour of a small hand-held recorder which he idly spun in his right hand while he spoke in low tones with a fellow reporter, a woman dressed for television with blonde coiffed hair. Ryan was nodding distractedly to whatever the woman was saying, his chin tucked down towards his chest with his head tilted to one side, his attention focused on the figures clustered together on the driveway.

“-waste this chance to see what the unsub is trying to show us,” Shane finishes, snatching back the end of his sentence before it has the chance to drift away. Ryan gives him a lazy half-wave half-salute, the gesture encompassing the crowd of onlookers, the media and the arrival of the far too late of an ambulance, as if to say _can you believe this shit?_ Shane gives a little half smirk, nodding slightly to acknowledge the other man as he turns back towards Jen.

“What’re you doing?” yells a voice, causing Shane to pause. A woman, a member of the public ensconced behind the fluttering police tape, wearing a sundress, her face pink with sunburn and indignation after catching sight of the exchange between the profiler and the reporter.

“Get your shit together, FBI!” she screams, hands lumped on hips, the clatter of camera shutters firing rapidly urging her on. “How many more people gotta die?”

“Are you serious?” Shane murmurs in disbelief, turning to fully face the crowd, his brow knitted together in confusion, his body language open with his palms turned outwards and his shoulders half-shrugged in the universal gesture of ‘ _Are you kidding me?’_

“Oh no,” Jen mutters, grabbing Shane by the back of the shirt and forcing him to twist away. “Not a good look, you’re going to end up as the lead story on _Fox News_ if you don’t watch it, c’mon man get inside.”

She ushers him towards the house, Reader and Cooper bringing up the rear - bearing enough sense to realise that having the crowd turn on the senior members of the taskforce would not make for a good photo op. The group, accompanied by the paramedics who seemed motivated by a morbid curiosity, rather than the idealisation they could actually render aid, gathered in the entryway. Immediately to their left was a flight of stairs which led upstairs - ground-in dirt from the heavy tread of the responding officers traced the path to where the body lay. In front of them, the entryway opened directly to the living room - the sharp angles of the house twisting away in an inverted U shape, leading to the kitchen and the rear of the home.

“Who’s the victim?” Shane asks Jen, shrugging off his preoccupation with the events outside like a wet coat.

“I thought you didn’t like knowing about the vic before you had a chance to see the crime scene?” Jen queried, casting a glance towards the other occupants of the room who were engrossed with the phones pressed to their ears, coordinating the remainder of their team.

Shane shrugs again. “Ordinarily? Yeah. But I’m finding I’ve gotta be more, um...flexible with things here. Might as well get all the facts I can.”

“Alrighty then,” Jen says. “His name’s Marcus Spinney, 48 years old, never married, no kids, spent six days of the week running his grocery...huh, I guess it’ll have to close now, that’ll suck, everyone’s going to have to go to that one in the next town over.”

“You only have one grocery store here?” Shane repeats in surprise.

“Yeah.”

“Three camping supply stores and only one grocery store…right,” Shane shakes his head. “And now the guy that runs it is dead?”

Jen hums in agreement. “Why? That important?”

“Could be,” Shane says noncommittally, “You said he worked six days, when he’d take time off?”

“Tuesdays, so yesterday - the store’s manager that opens with him tried calling when Spinney didn’t show up today, got no answer and figured he was out sick. When he didn’t hear from him by the end of the day he went around and tried getting in, then called us when he saw the window was open upstairs.”

“Ah,” mutters Shane, his expression turning grim. “Let’s go meet Marcus Spinney then.”

Leading the way, Shane sets off up the stairs, the small contingent of emergency service personnel close at his heels him. The profiler pauses at the first landing, halted by the thickened air, heavy with the smell of rotten meat tinged with the cloying scent of cheap perfume. Behind him, someone gagged.

The human body undergoes a number of changes once life is snuffed out, metamorphosing into a vast and complex ecosystem. Within minutes of the heart beating its last, a process called autolysis - or, self-digestion - begins. Cells become deprived of oxygen, their acidity increasing until their membranes rupture, releasing enzymes which begin eating organs from the inside out - starting with the brain and liver, before spreading throughout the body. As these enzymes and newly liberated gut bacteria tear along the highway of blood vessels which criss-cross the body in their quest to consume everything, blood spills out of their cells and settles in the capillaries and small veins, colouring the skin green, then purple, then black.

At the same time, the death chill overtakes the body until the adenosine triphosphate, the chemical that helps our bodies relax their muscles, depletes and allows for rigor mortis to set in. This stiffness of death starts at the eyelids, jaw and neck - setting the face into a snarl - before spreading through the rest of the body. All the while, the microbial clock ticks on, reducing the body’s tissue into methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia which bloat the body, often swelling it to almost twice its normal size before its innards putrefy.

All of this was awaiting Shane as he crossed the threshold into Marcus Spinney’s bedroom.

Marcus had not died well.

The grocer lay on his side, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other clenched into a half fist on the top sheet. A light blanket was pooled around his legs, kicked off at some point during the humid night before. The back of his head was almost completely obliterated, a ragged turmoil of blood, bone and brain matter spilt across the pillow, arching up along the headboard. Skull fragments, gleaming white in the overhead light, formed a jutted ring around the exposed grey matter, as if the unsub had gotten their weapon of choice stuck in the bone before dislodging it.

Spinney’s face was a speckled mess as the force of the blows had ruptured the capillaries under his facial tissue, lining his face in a way that age never would. Forming a wide arch which flung away from the body, touching the ceiling before finishing on the far wall where a watercolour hung, was a thick spray of blood - its vivid red colouring long since oxidised into a dull rust.

Shane takes a half-step back, burying his nose in the crock of his arm and blinking rapidly to stop his eyes from watering. Behind him, Jen chokes back a strange guttural coughing sound, struggling not to lose whatever breakroom snack she’d consumed by way of dinner.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Shane instructs, his voice muffled by his shirt sleeve, “Otherwise the smell is gonna get stuck in the lining of your nose and you’ll taste it for weeks.”

As the sound of five people breathing noisily through their mouths mingles with the loud buzz of insects swarming over the body, Shane fishes around in the recesses of his pants pocket, producing a small vapour rub which he applies to just above his upper lip before he passes the tube back to Jen.

“Vicks. They use it in funeral homes - helps mask the smell.”

“You always carry that around with you?” asks Reader, the usual mocking tone of his voice stolen away by the grim scene.

“Sure, never leave home without it,” Shane replies, gingerly stepping around a long drip of blood. “Wallet, phone, vapour rub for the dead guys, keys.”

“God, you’re a real weirdo.”

“What’s that?” interrupts Jen, pointing at a congealed, chunky _something_ clinging to the ceiling above the body.  

“Some of the cerebellum maybe?” Shane suggests, craning his head back. “That stuff is mostly fat, real nasty to get off - hope you guys have a good cleaner on call.”

The young officer blanches, rocking back on her heels. Unperturbed, Shane turns to Cooper. “Look, your forensics team still isn’t here - let me run the scene for now, I’m not gonna touch anything and it’ll give us a real chance to get a jump on the unsub.”

“That’s what you said with Tracy Velour,” drawls Cooper, his expression contorted into a grimace and tinged with green. A fly scurries across the older man’s hairline before being irritably battered away.

“What?”

The Chief’s attitude pivots in an instant, all traces of distress at the scene before him melting away to be replaced by towering impotent rage.

“You said that you picking over Tracy’s body like some kind of vulture would help you find this sick fuck, and ya didn’t,” he erupts, stabbing a finger at Shane’s chest. “Your goddamn department said you could get the job done and all you’ve done is fuck around!”

The paramedics, who have absolutely no stakes in this matter and look as if they’ve wanted to slink away to be discreetly sick since entering the room, draw back in shock.  

“Okay,” Shane responds, calm as he can manage with Cooper squaring up on him as if inviting an altercation, “I think everyone is feeling a lot of pressure right now, so how about we all take a deep breath - uh not literally, there’s a dead body right behind us - and we’ll -”

“-I am so sick of your namby-pamby PC bullshit!” brays the Chief. “You think you’re so much better than all of us, I get you don’t give a shit that these people are dying ‘cause you get to go back to your nice safe life but this is my fucking town!”

“Chief, c’mon,” Jen placates, clutching the vapour rub like a talisman that’d teleport her from this situation as she places herself between the two warring men. “Agent Madej is doing the best he can.”

Cooper won’t be deterred, easily looking over the top of Jen’s head, the muscles in his arm jumping as if he intends on striking Shane. “You said he’s killing every three weeks,” he snarls, “What the fuck happened?”

“ _You_ did,” Shane exclaims, disbelief writ clear over his face, the last of the stitching that’d been holding his patience together since he’d crossed the threshold of Tellridge’s police station finally snapping. “ _You_ antagonised the unsub by holding that press conference, _you_ wasted time arresting the wrong guy after ignoring my profile, _you_ bragged to the press about it and made the unsub accelerate their timeline.”

Cooper looks as if he’s about to interrupt but Shane doesn’t give him the chance. “I am damn good at my job and I’ve been doing it with both hands tied behind my back ever since I got here because you are so controlling - and yeah, I don’t know these people the way you do, but Jesus Christ, I still _care_ about them! Now I need everyone to get out of the room so I can do my job, because I plan on keeping my job after all is said and done, what about you, Chief?”

The other man’s mouth works silently for a moment, a vein pulsing violently near his right eye. Without warning, he spins on his heel, shoving his way past the paramedics to disappear out into the hall.

“What are you still doing here?” the previously silent Reader snaps at the beleaguered medics as he follows his boss from the room, “Guy’s dead, get outta here.”   

Jen, torn between sympathy for the profiler and relief at the prospect of escaping the room at long last, merely gives a small shrug as she leaves Shane alone. The profiler exhales a long breath, uncurling his hands from where he’d clenched them behind his back after they’d started minutely shaking the moment he’d entered into the confrontation with Cooper.

“I should’ve just listened to my high school careers counselor and been a goat farmer,” he mutters under his breath. Turning to address the body on the bed he says, “I was kinda just grandstanding then, man, I don’t think you’ve got a whole lot to tell me.”

He sighs deeply once more, picking his way across the room until he’s able to stand directly over the body, gently moving the swarming flies away with a wave of his hand. There was very little point in attempting a reconstruction; unlike Tracy Velour’s crime scene, the method of death was so clear that the killer might as well have drawn Shane a map.

“You know, I really thought I had this worked out,” Shane murmurs, continuing his quiet one-sided conversation with the remains of Marcus Spinney as he examines the scene with a tilt of his head. “Here I was thinking that he - because it is a he, isn’t it? That he was settling into a pattern of making his victims works of art...elevating them...but you... _buddy_ , this is ugly...it’s, uh, hasty.”

Now inches away from the bloodied mess that was the back of Spinney’s head, heedless of the smell, the profiler shrugs lightly. “See, I think it was always going to be you, Marcus - very predictable schedule, live alone - but I think arresting Clint must’ve rushed things a little bit; all of his other kills are so precise, even when he’s using similar methods it’s just...cleaner.”

“This is such amateur hour I’d almost call it a copycat killing,” Shane continues, his eyes tracking the blood splatter, calculating where the killer must’ve stood and the angle of attack. “Of course that means there’s now two unsubs running around town, which is double the amount of unsubs I want to be dealing with right now. It just doesn’t make sens-”

“We fucking got ‘im!” Mark Reader’s disembodied voice booms, and Shane starts, nearly putting his hand in a pool of cerebrospinal fluid before steadying himself.

“Do you see what I’m having to work with here, Marcus?” the profiler asks, “Wait a tic, I’ll be right back.”

He takes the stairs two at the time, swinging past the front door where the sounds of the poor, poor paramedics emptying their stomachs was making a great visual for the six o’clock bulletins. He continues through the rest of the house, passing the combined kitchen/dining area, before pulling up short at the laundry entrance. 

An bizarre tableau lay before him. The back door was closed, its deadbolt driven home, the ornate veneer disguising a solid oak structure - yet a light summer breeze flows freely into the space, aided by the hole in the door where a panel had been neatly removed. Sawdust littered the floor, soaking up the blood which had flowed down the handle of an axe that had been lent against the wall, almost like an afterthought, its bit plastered with dried blood and hair.

“The idiot left the murder weapon behind,” crows Cooper. The three officers are standing in the far corner of the room, Jen, well aware her supervisors were moments away from touching something they shouldn’t, was snapping pictures on her cellphone in an attempt to preserve the scene.

“I don’t think so,” says Shane, cautiously crouching closer to the bloodied axe. “Any chance Marcus has a middle name starting with ‘B’?”

“Yeah - ‘Banjo’ - how’d ya’d know that?” questions Reader.

“Because,” Shane replies, gesturing for them to join him, “I think Marcus might’ve been one of those guys who wanted to make sure his neighbours never stole his tools.”

He points to the handle of the axe where the initials ‘M.B.S’ were barely visible under the gore.

“Shit,” whistles the detective, “Son-of-a-bitch killed him with his own axe - hey! That’s something we should warn the press about, right? That the killer is taking weapons from the house?”

“And say what?” Shane asks incredulously, “‘This just in, throw away your axes!’ That’ll just cause more panic - no, this was left here deliberately.”

“How’d he get in?” Jen asks. “There’s no way he came through that broken panel, even I couldn’t fit in there.”

Feeling strangely as if he were looking at a sliding puzzle where just a few pieces were misaligned, Shane pulls the sleeve of his shirt over his hand to carefully unlock the door and step outside. There, set out on the paved courtyard, was the missing door panel and the chisel used to remove it, as if the unsub had set them down just moments ago and walked away.  

“So I’m thinking that Marcus seems like the kind of guy to - ah, yeah here we go,” Shane kicks back the welcome mat to reveal a well-used key. A rush of energy, the sort of which normally heralded a breakthrough singed through his veins, electrifying the profiler.

“Ooh! I love this - this - this is,” Shane struggles to find the right words as he shifts from foot to foot, “This is all making total sense now, right guys?”

Reader casts a sidelong glance at Cooper. “Told you he’s cracked in the head.”

“No, no, okay.” Shane forces himself to slow down, realising not everyone was accustomed to his stream of consciousness ramblings. “So before now the unsub has been constructing scenes _around_ the victims - all he wanted us to see was right there with the bodies. Every element is totally controlled by him.”

“But that up there?” Shane waves a hand towards the bloodbath above them. “Total chaos, every element is just screaming of him being in a hurry. But this here, total control - there’s no way he could’ve chiseled out the panel without alerting Spinney, and then he just left the murder weapon behind after leaving no trace of himself before now? What’s more likely, that he suddenly got sloppy mid-way through a kill, or -”

“Or the whole thing is planned,” Jen finishes, her expression clearing in understanding.

Shane snaps his fingers. “Gold star for Officer Ruggirello! Marcus Spinney’s death looks like a mess on purpose, there’s something we’re not seeing up there.”

He sweeps past them to return to the scene of the crime, feeling oddly gratified when he hears the three officers fall into step behind him. Without the shock of the festering body or the anticipation of what the unsub had left for them, Shane’s mind feels clearer than it had in days - bits and pieces of the cases fitting together in ways he hadn’t even considered before now as he climbed the stairs. So intense was his focus that he paused right as he reached the second floor, turning to look down the darkened hallway.

“What’s that sound?” he asks.

It was a stuttering sound. An almost rhythmic tapping that faded in and out every few minutes. It was familiar in a way that Shane couldn’t immediately place, enough to draw him down the hallway, the sound getting louder, until he turned off into a small study space.

“Okay, what the fuck is that?” says Cooper from over his shoulder.

 _That_ was a record player.

Laying in the middle of the room, it was the kind you’d unearth in an antiques shop in a dusty back corner; its turntable made from wood with cracks at the edges, the spindle a tattered golden and cracked with rust, and the rubber stopper splintered and disintegrating. A record wobbles around, the needle having slipped off to create the tapping sound which had lured Shane in. 

“This guy is so extra,” Shane says with a shake of his head. “What kind of unsub brings their own soundtrack to a murder?”

“You think the killer lugged this all the way upstairs after butchering a guy to death?” Reader mutters in disbelief.

“Well, I don’t see any other records laying around, so the unsub may as well have added a giant sign that says ‘play me’.” Shane counters, delicately reaching over to reset the needle. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

A jaunty, upbeat melody of piano, saxophone and double bass filled the room. The killer had decent taste in music, Shane had to give him that - he could almost imagine himself drinking in some crappy bar whilst on a case down South while a jazz band played this in some darkened corner. But the persistent image of the unsub swinging an axe while the song screamed in the background wouldn’t stop intruding on the profiler’s consciousness.

“I’ve no idea what this is meant to mean,” Shane admits as the song draws to a close.

“I might.”

Jen had slipped from the room unnoticed at some point while the record played, returning with her phone trapped against her ear with her hunched shoulder. “My girlfriend’s still at the college, she’s, like, a encyclopedia of obscure music and she’s really, really good at ear training and the Suzuki method - we should let her have a listen.”

“You ready babe?” she asks into the phone, setting it to loudspeaker.

“Let’s give it a go,” a woman’s voice answers. They circle around Jen, who held the phone as close to the record player as she could while resetting the needle once more. The tension palpable as the first notes warbled into the space.

“Oh!” exclaims Jen’s partner after a few bars have played. “Yeah, okay I know this - it was composed by Joseph John Davilla in - ah - 1918...19? - Sometime around then. It’s called ‘Don’t Scare Me Papa’.”

“You’re so smart, babe!” Jen enthuses, drawing the phone back towards her, as if about to break the connection.

“Fun fact,” the girlfriend continues, “Davilla wrote that at the height of the axeman of New Orleans attacks.”

There it was.

That dawning, soothing feeling which calmed the nervous energy that drove the profiler through all his cases; that moment a long-distance runner glimpses the finish line after a punishing marathon; the moment where a child turns to the page of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ where Hagrid kicks down the door to tell Harry he’s a wizard.

 _This all makes sense_.

Shane inhales sharply, the action effectively silencing the babble of voices he’d been impervious to over the last few moments.

“I know why he’s doing this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The description of high-impact trauma and how a body decomposes has been drawn from 'Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home' by Gil Reavill. 
> 
> The Suzuki method is a teaching philosophy that aims to create an environment for learning music which parallels the linguistic environment of acquiring a native language. Much emphasis is being placed upon retaining and reviewing every piece of music ever learned for easy recognition. 
> 
> The description of 'Don't Scare Me Papa' has been drawn from a few piano compositions on YouTube as well as 'The Axeman's Jazz' by Reddie Whilling & Abel - which I highly recommend checking out. 
> 
> This has been my most extensively researched chapter to date, I've attempted to make all details as factually correct as possible but I apologise if there are any mistakes. We're now officially at the half-way point for this story and I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has taken the time to read, leave kudos and comments on this little fan work of mine. It's been a truly humbling experience to see how much everyone has been enjoying this work. 
> 
> And as always, you can come chat to me on tumblr @hey-there-ghouls


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane shares his breakthrough. Jen proposes a trip to the bar. Ryan isn't a wordsmith, but does have a conspiracy theory about the moon. And of course, there's murder afoot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to drinking, anxiety, and all the blood and gore you've come to expect from this fic.

The sky had not yet yielded its darkness when the profiler and his protégé ascend the steps of Tellridge’s police station. The street was empty. The shops were shuttered. The air was cool, the usual humidity drawn from the air to bead on the ground. A soft pink glow radiating from the horizon poured over the scene. It was a moment where Shane didn’t know if the day was arriving or departing, a time that had become detached from its significance without him realising. He turns to ask Jen but she’s already hurried inside.

The duo had decamped from Marcus Spinney’s home after their efforts to verify Shane’s revelation had been thwarted by poor cellphone reception which no amount of creatively angling the devices could remedy.

Jen, armed with a list of names that’d she’d hastily scrawled onto the back of her hand in an attempt to keep up with Shane’s rapid-fire instructions that he’d reeled off on the drive back, one hand on the wheel, the other gesticulating wildly, peeled off to her desk to boot up her computer.

Hours, minutes, seconds pass in an heartbeat as the profiler stands in front of the whiteboard, methodically writing key points from all the cases whilst Jen flitters in and out  bearing reams of paper. The dead look down upon him, silent witnesses to the list of names imprinted on his brain:

_Marcus Spinney. Axe._

_Tracey Velour. Exsanguination._

_Maria O’Hara. Asphyxiation._

_Justin Belli. Blunt force trauma._

_Charlie Malik. Poisoning._

By the time the time Cooper and Reader arrive, somber from calls to Spinney’s next of kin, with spare blue forensics gloves spilling from their pockets, Shane is ready for them.

“Okay so this?” he waves a hand behind himself at the organised chaos of the board, “This is great. I mean, obviously murder is bad and this guy is a real piece of work...but it’s nice to have a bit of variety, ya know? I love it when unsubs have a fun little thing.”

“Told you he’d go off the deep end,” Reader tells Cooper as he heavily sets his feet on the desk, the dried blood caked on the soles of his shoes flaking off.

“You were right that the unsub has been escalating,” Shane informs Cooper, “But what we didn’t realise was that it’s not just his timeline, he’s been escalating the crime scenes as well. He’s as frustrated as we are that we’re not getting it - this guy needs everyone to see just how clever he is - in his mind these crime scenes are works of art and we’re looking at them like they’ve been drawn by kindergartners.”

“He’s been dumbing them down for us, look at this,” Shane continues, turning to gesture at the photos from the Malik case. “It’s subtle. It’s precise. Every single detail is by his design, right down to how the victim’s hands are positioned.”

He points down the macabre lineup towards Jen’s cellphone pictures which had been blown up and displayed in all their blood-soaked glory.

“Now look at the Spinney scene - he just took an axe,” The profiler pantomimes slowly bringing the weapon high over his head before wildly slashing down. “Starts hacking away like he’s chopping wood. Subtlety completely goes out the window. Total different M.O. And that’s the point. He’s been gift wrapping these scenes for us and I haven’t seen it before now because I’m an idiot.”

“Finally, something we can all agree on,” scoffs Reader, looking to Cooper expectantantly.

The Chief of Police answers with a withering look. “Shut up, Mark.” He nods to Shane. “You, keep talking.”

“They’re all unsolved crimes,” Shane says in a rush, the excitement of realisation laid bare in his tone. “The unsub is mimicking infamous unsolved crimes - every one of these deaths are - are tributes, but they’re more than that - he’s _elevating_ them to an art form that he’s putting on a stage for the whole world to see. This is him saying ‘ _you think these crimes are worthy of your admiration? Look how much better I am. I’m greater than the greats_ ’. He’s, uh, he’s really got a bit of an ego.”

He can tell the other two men aren’t entirely convinced by his spiel. Jen, already on the same wavelength as the profiler, is flipping through the bundle of folders she’d assembled throughout the day.

“Okay so, the Axeman of New Orleans,” Shane begins, gesturing at the picture taped under those of the Spinney crime scene. It was a replica of the album cover for the song Jen’s girlfriend had identified at the dead man’s house, the black and white woebegone figures desperately playing the Axeman’s tune.

“Active from May 1918 to October 1919. Credited with twelve attacks, six of which were fatal; the victims were mostly Italian grocers who were attacked in their sleep with an axe, usually one that belonged to the victims’ themselves….because this guy was thrifty, I guess,” Shane shrugs.

“Survivors saw him as some sort of ‘demonic figure,’” He makes quotation marks with his fingers, “As he seemingly entered the homes through a panel in the back door which he’d chisel out. An infamous lover of jazz, he once promised to not horrifically murder anyone for a whole day if the whole town ‘jazz it’ - which just as an aside, is a terrific phrase.”

No one laughs.

Shane clears his throat, pointing to the accompanying images. “Marcus Spinney, Tellridge’s only grocer, killed in his sleep with his own axe. The unsub entered through the backdoor using a key but took the time to chisel out one of the door’s panels. And of course, the unsub hauled a record player to the scene just so he could provide his own backing track - a song that was composed as a tribute to the Axeman of New Orleans.”

Shane lets his words hang in the air for a moment before attempting to take a dramatic sidestep along the board which turns into a fumbling stumble.  “Sorry, I normally get to play with a laser pointer for this kind of thing - Right, Maria O’Hara -”

“Hang on, you skipped Tracy Velour,” Cooper interrupts, looking to the photo of the dark haired woman which sat apart from all the other victims, enshrined on a unadorned cork board.

“Velour’s an outlier. She’s our lynchpin for this case,” Shane explains, “We’ll get to her in a minute.”

“So Maria’s body is found in a hollow trunk of a tree. Cause of death is asphyxiation through a combination of strangulation and stuffing a cloth in her mouth,” he says, returning to the matter at hand. “Her right hand was removed and placed some distance away. Extra tragedy points for this one because she was just three weeks away from being married.”

Shane gestures to Jen who produces a black and white photo of a hand cupping a skull; a clump of hair hung off the remaining flesh of the forehead with two crooked teeth gaping out of the mouth.

“England, April 1943. Four boys hunting for birds nests find the skull of a woman in a old wych elm tree. Police uncover the rest of the her skeleton inside the tree along with a gold wedding ring,” Shane draws a breath. “No clear indication of cause of death, but I’d guess the length of taffeta stuffed in her mouth might’ve had something to do with it. They found some bones from her hand scattered nearby.”

“Pathologists were able to build a pretty decent description of the woman, given the circumstances, but no one came forward and interest in the case died out. Until the graffiti started to appear,” Shane points to the single line scrawled under Maria’s photo: ‘ _Who put Bella in the wych–elm?_ ’

“Officer Ruggirello,” the profiler says, reaching behind himself to locate the cup of tea Jen had brought him at some forgotten hour. “What else did you find?”

“Oh.” Jen responds, momentarily caught off-guard as she quickly pages through her notes. “Uh, in the next case the victim was found in his hotel room by staff after the room’s phone was taken off the hook a buncha times.”

“He’d been tortured, stabbed, strangled and beaten until his skull fractured,” she blows air out through her teeth with a hiss as she flips over to the next page. “He declined to identify his attacker, saying he slipped in the tub...because I know when I fall in the shower it gets blood all over the ceiling in the next room...and uh, yeah then he fell into a coma and died.”

Reader, who’d been sulking up until now, frowns. “That’s not right,” he interjects, “Justin Belli was DOA and his phone was only taken off the hook once.”

“That’s because this isn’t Justin Belli,” Jen responds. “This guy is Artemus Ogletree, died 1935 in Missouri.”

“And what other similarities are there, Officer Ruggirello?” asks Shane, fighting to maintain a cool air of indifference whilst choking down the cold tea which Jen had emptied most of a sugar bowl into.

“Um.” Jen bows her head over the notes in her lap, her elbows braced on either side of the paper with arms bowed out, fingers ticking off points as she went. “Both attacks seem to originate in the bathroom, both had notes addressing some guy called ‘Don’, both had ‘Do not disturb’ signs hanging on the door, the victims were found on the floor and...uh...Oh!”

She points down to her research with a flick of her wrist. “Forensics notes for the Belli case say that the alarm clock went off at 10:46am while they getting ready to leave - Artemus Ogletree died in room 1046 of the President Hotel.”

At some point during this exchange, Reader had lifted his feet from the table and was now sitting upright, worrying at the edge of his thumbnail with calloused fingers. Cooper, looking like a man who’d gone to his doctor for test results, only to be redirected down the hall to Oncology, wipes a hand over his face.

“Okay,” he says, dragging his vowels like a tired man, “So who’s Charlie Malik supposed to be?”

“So here’s the thing,” Shane starts, “There’s not a lot to go with on this one. Malik was found in the woods, sitting at a trailhead - we can assume the unsub carried him out there because his car was found miles away. His body was immaculate with no obvious cause of death. Autopsy later identified an unknown poison was introduced to his system but uh...that’s where the trail goes cold, excuse the pun.”

“Turns out there’s a lot of unsolved crimes in the woods...and there are even more unsolved crimes involving poisoning.” He leans back against the whiteboard. “It could be a reference to the Tylenol murders, the Bogle and Chandler deaths, Patsy Wright’s murder, that guy who won the lotto -”

“Anything involving the Russians,” Jen chimes in.

“Controversial but true,” Shane agrees. “But you have to remember this was the unsub at his most subtle - this is his debut, not his first kill, it’s far too sophisticated for that - but it’s his first kill where he’s found something that sticks. It’s clean. It’s...elegant. He’s clearly obsessed over getting every detail right, but since the body’s gone, we can only rely on pictures.”

“And his clothes,” Reader says suddenly.

Shane glances at Jen, who frowns and shakes her head. “There’s nothing logged,” she says.

“ ‘course there isn’t,” Reader shoots back, “We’ve been a bit busy with a fuckin’ serial killer in case you didn’t notice, paperwork isn’t high on my ‘to do’ list. But we got ‘em, family refused to take them after we did the autopsy, said they didn’t think they belonged to the vic.”

Shane shoots a disbelieving glance to Jen, who is already on her feet and hurrying away - the distant sound of the door to the evidence room banging shut while the profiler gestures for Cooper to hand him one of the spare set of latex gloves.

Within a few minutes Jen is back, protectively clutching a shrink-wrapped bundle of clothes to her chest. She rips open the yellow tape sealing the package, letting the clothes spill out across the table as the three men crowd in - shuffling until the patchy halogen light casts its sickly yellow glow over the scene. Cautiously, Shane checks the shirt and pants pockets - as expected, they were empty, their contents having been long since returned to the victim’s family.

“That’s weird, all the labels have been cut out,” Shane murmurs, frowning.

He flips the pants inside out, hunting for any identifying mark to tell him what the unsub - because this was clearly his handiwork - was thinking. Running his palm up the inseam, he pauses for a moment, thumb rubbing over the inside of the left-hand pocket.

“There’s something in here,” he says, turning the pants in the right way and bending over to examine the lining.

There, barely visible against the drab brown pocket interior, was a neat row of stitches.

“Someone’s stitched the watch pocket shut,” Shane explains, picking at the thread with a fingernail blunted by the latex gloving.

Jen offers him a pair of scissors produced from the veritable boundless depths of her uniform pockets, which Shane accepts and uses to part the threading in one smooth movement. The profiler hooks his finger between the walls of fabric, removing a tiny piece of rolled-up paper. He unfurls it delicately, unveiling two printed words - painfully familiar in its missive:

_Tamam Shud_

“Somerton Man. You...uh...you had the answer this whole time and you didn’t just - didn’t just look,” Shane said in a flat, halting tone. “It coulda ended right here with Malik but instead the unsub quadrupled the number of bod - the number of victims, before anyone thought to check the damn pockets...it’s so goddamn beautifully subtle, you couldn’t even see it.”

“Shane,” Jen prompts, her voice gentle, perhaps aware that the edge creeping into the profiler’s speech heralded an outburst that’d make it even harder to get the two senior detectives onside. “Tracy Velour?”

“It’s, uh.” Shane pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling a calming breath. “It’s not based on an unsolved case, I was right before - it’s revenge. He sees the press as a way of getting recognition for his work and when Jay Velour wouldn’t play ball, the unsub made a statement that couldn’t be ignored.”

“Unlike all the other victims, the unsub went out his way to ensure that Velour didn’t suffer unnecessarily,” he continues, “But the elaborate set-up, the...drama of the unveiling of her beheading indicates that he can’t enjoy these kills unless he’s able to construct a story around them.”

“Her death was based on a book, by the way,” he adds. “A collection of scary bedtime stories for kids - I knew it seemed familiar. Your unsub is both fascinated and frightened by the macabre - yeah he’s showing off - but he’s also working through his own demons, and it’s unlikely he’ll stop until he exorcises them. Problem is, I don’t think he realises he can’t.”  

Somewhere in the station a clock steadily ticks down the minutes. A car with a damaged exhaust rattles by. Distantly, children are laughing as they cycle their way to the corner store. Life carries on until it reaches the door of this tiny corner of the universe where four figures stood, the severity of the moment rendering them still and silent - all caught up in a hurricane of emotion which united and drove them apart at the same time.

Finally, Cooper sighs.

“Right. What do we do now?”

\------

The hours pass, remarked upon only by the march of sunlight across the floor through slanted blinds.

They draft a press release based on Shane’s description of the unsub:

_Male._

_Late twenties to early thirties._

_Highly detailed orientated in his everyday life._

_Intelligent._

_Strong, but not physically imposing._

_Charming and well liked._

_Intense interest in the macabre but unlikely to bring it up in conversation._

_Will be following the investigation very closely._

Cooper and Reader return to the Spinney house to wrap up the scene. Jen falls asleep at her desk, her head pillowed in her arms. And Shane works. He works with the fervent intent of a man lost in the wildness for weeks without a compass who’s finally glimpsed daylight through the trees. He works without pause, combing through the region’s police file with a conviction that the unsub’s first victim was not Charlie Malik. So deep was his concentration that when Jen touches him on the shoulder, he jumps violently.

“Sorry,” Jen apologises, drawing her hand back as if burned. “I just wanted to ask if you wanted to grab a drink with me at Ricardo’s? My treat.”

“Oh. Thanks, but uh,” he replies, glancing down at his notes which have spread across the table like weeds, “I really should stay here in case anyone calls in on the tip line - we might actually get something useful this time.”

“Shift change just got here,” Jen says, nodding towards the entrance to the bullpen, where indeed the sounds of people speaking quietly and papers rustling could be heard. “Funding’s come through to finally staff this place 24/7.

She shrugs lightly. “I’ve already told the guys to call you first if any tips come in, even if it’s just Ms. Wattles reporting that her cat got out again - C’mon! It’s not like unsub is going to be sitting around waiting for you to find him!”

Seeing that Jen would not be easily dissuaded and the stiffness in his joints telling him he’d been sitting for far too long, Shane got up and followed the younger officer from the station.

Outside it was quiet. The street was abandoned. The shops were closed. The air was cool, damp in a way that only summer could be. Scattered light on the horizon cast an orange glow over the scene and darkness streaked high above their heads. It was so disconcertingly familiar that Shane felt as if the ground were tilting out from beneath him.

This happened sometimes on cases; time dissolves into itself, as formless as shifting shadows. So fixated on the case before him that the world falls away, days swallowing up each other like the ouroboros until the tight ball of anxiety knocking against his chest aligns with the racing of his heart.

He turns to Jen, his vision taking a moment to focus on her figure silhouetted against the streetlight like a video where the sound is out of sync.

“What time is it?” he asks, the words struggling to string themselves together into coherency.

Jen grins over her shoulder at him. “Happy hour.”

\------

When a town is gripped by a faceless threat, the kind that draws someone like Shane in to poke around in the darkest crevices, two things happen. The first is that trust bleeds away, communities break apart, its members only concerned with those who live within their four walls.

The second is people drink.

A lot.

Ricardo’s was jumping, its bar staff darting back and forth behind the bar to keep up with demand, the patrons leaning up against every available surface and spilling out onto the street.

Jen and Shane collect their drinks and lean back against the counter, scanning the crowd for any available seat. It was too noisy to carry on a conversation, so when Jen tugs on Shane’s sleeve and pulls him into the heaving throng, Shane goes without question. They weave their way through the room, past large groups of people shouting over one another to be heard, into a quieter recess where the lighting was dimmer and Ryan Bergara was nursing a drink.

He’s somehow secured a table for himself, beer glasses clustered in front of him bleeding condensation while he sits hunched forward on his phone. He glances up when their shadows fall across the table, his gaze lingering first on Shane before sliding over to Jen - then he smiles wide, leaning back in his chair.

“Hey there,” he greets as Jen throws herself down in the chair closest to him and gestures for Shane to follow.

“Hey, have you met Shane?” Jen asks, slopping her drink onto the table as she waves it towards the profiler. “He’s helping us with the case.”

Ryan glances at the other man. “Uh, yeah.”

“We keep meeting,” Shane agrees, taking a pull of his beer.

“That’s great.” Jen beams, slumping against Ryan’s shoulder - a combination of no sleep and the bartender being far too liberal with pouring shots into her drink means she’s already languid and giggly.  

In a sudden burst of affection, she hooks Shane by the arm and drags him close, patting both men on the shoulder. “My beautiful, beautiful boys,” she coos.

Ryan shoots Shane an amused glance over the top of Jen’s head, but whatever tangent she was about to embark upon had been interrupted by her phone ringing loudly in her pocket. Jen scrambles to answer it, her delighted reaction hinting that her girlfriend was on the end of the line. She makes as if to head outside, only to pause upon remembering that she dragged Shane here.

“Don’t worry,” Ryan tells her with a wink, seemingly reading her mind, “I’ll look after him.”

With the young officer gone, Shane reverts to his usual pattern of behaviour when trapped in a social situation with someone who: a. knows his shameful coffee order and b. has seen him teetering on a panic attack more than once - he ignores them. He succeeds for some time, sitting slumped in his seat, alternating between nursing his beer and peeling the label off the bottle, while Ryan stares at him expectantly.

Right as Shane is about to cross the line from ‘socially awkward’ to ‘asshole’, he glances at Ryan who flashes him a smile as bright as sunshine and pats Jen’s recently vacated seat until Shane moves closer. Both men have to rearrange themselves to avoid tangling their legs together, their shoulders lightly brushing.

“You know you’re more talkative when one of us is meant to be working than when you’re off the clock?” Ryan asks.

“What can I say?” Shane quips, “Dead guys make me chatty”

“Do you take anything seriously?”

“I try not to,” the profiler says. “Anyway I wasn’t expecting to see you. Thought, uh, we’d made more than enough work for you guys today.”

“Eh, you’d think so,” Ryan shrugs. “Spent all day pulling together the front page based on that description of the killer you sent us but the editorial team and I are having, shall we say, ‘creative differences’ about what to call this guy so they sent me home while they sort it out.”

“That’s rough,” Shane commiserates, “Naming them is always the fun part - we never get to do that.”

“Yeah, joke’s on them though,” Ryan says, “I just found out the paper has a tab here. So with that in mind, next round’s on me - catch up, big guy.”

Shane looks down at his half-empty bottle and drains it in one long swig as Ryan flags down a passing bartender who returns with a tray laden with bottles which he unloads to the table, tossing a bottle opener into the mix when someone back at the bar calls his name.  

“I got the owner free advertising when business was bad last year,” Ryan explains at Shane’s taken aback expression. “Besides, it won’t kill you to unwind a little...you’re like a..uhh...a big headed stress monster.”

“Big headed stress monster,” Shane repeats with a laugh, dragging a bottle closer to him and uncapping it. “Okay, I can see why they’re not letting you name the unsub - you’re a wordsmith! The world’s not ready for your genius.”  

Ryan swats him on the arm as he reaches past Shane to collect his beer. “Shut up, Shane. I was gonna tell you good job because I know Tellridge’s esteemed senior police won’t be saying it, but now you can go jump.”

“Yeah, well,” Shane concedes, all traces of amusement fading from his face as he takes a long drink. “Such is the glamour of consulting.”

They sit in contemplative silence for a long moment, broken only when Ryan hands Shane a replacement for the beer he hadn’t even realised he’d finished. Some quiet part of his brain is cautioning him to pace himself, but truth be told, this was the most relaxed he’d felt in weeks and he may actually get some sleep tonight.

“You ever just profile people for fun?” Ryan asks, casting Shane a sidelong glance, his amused smile barely hidden.

“Ah no, no, no, no,” Shane rapidly shakes his head, propping his elbows up on the table. “Last time I did that I pulled some Sherlock Holmes bullshit and Mark Reader is still giving me the stink eye.”

“Fuck Mark,” Ryan says dismissively, “Guy spends half his time emailing my work to see if we’ve got any pictures of him back in high school - I’m not that lame, you can trust me.”

Shane hums thoughtfully. The world has taken on a pleasant blur around the edges, the endless chatter of _what if what if_ that normally rattled around his skull had ceased. The tension which had been bleeding out of him since he’d sat down with the other man had finally completely drained away, leaving him loose-limbed and euphoric.

“Well alright,” he says after a moment's thought. “But it’s not a profile...more of, uh...more of a hypothesis - a proposal, if you will.”

“You proposing at me?”

“You’re right, it’s more like I’m propositioning you.”

“Jesus Christ, sir,” Ryan splutters with laughter.

Shane shushes him. “You strike me as the kind of guy who thinks a door blowing open in the wind is actually a ghost playing a little, uh, a little peek-a-boo with you.”

“I don’t have to sit here and have some wise guy mock my good character, I’ve got other friends, you know.”

“I didn’t hear a no,” Shane persists.  

“Look.”

The profiler throws his head back and laughs.  

“No I just -” Ryan backpedals, slapping a hand lightly down on the table as laughter overtakes him once more. “I just don’t think we can discount hundreds upon hundreds of real-life sightings, ya know?”

“Bet you’ve got a conspiracy about the moon landing too,” Shane teases.

“No.” Ryan shakes his head, “Are you kidding?”

“Well I didn’t mean to presume -”

“How can you have a conspiracy about the moon landing when it doesn’t even exist?” Ryan continues, “You still believe in the moon? C’mon man, get on my level.”

Shane nearly chokes on the dregs of his drink, collapsing into a fit of giggles, barely avoiding tipping into the other man who looks delighted at his reaction. Shane’s phone has been buzzing persistently in his pocket for several minutes and he finally, reluctantly, fishes it out.

(21:56) _Jen_ :  _sorry man gotta bounce, the missus phoned in a bootie call_.

“Hey, gimme your phone for a sec,” Ryan sets his beer down, holding his hand out flat.

“ET wanna phone home?” Shane asks, far too amused by his own joke.

“Nah, man. Just wanted to give you my number.”

That sobers Shane up somewhat, suspicion clouding in. “Ryan, I swear if this has been some kind of long con to get the inside scoop on the case -”

“What?” Hurt flashes across the other man’s face - his eyes widening, brows jumping up towards his hairline as his mouth drops open in surprise. “No! Fuck, are you serious, Shane? This might sound _insane_ to you, but I actually like hanging out with you and I thought _maybe_ you’d like a break from dealing with fucking Cooper and Reader every day.”

Chastised, Shane hands the cellphone over and uncaps another bottle, draining half of it while Ryan inputs his digits.

Ryan hands it back with a huff. “There! I’ve never had to work so hard in my life to give someone my number.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Shane jokes weakly.

“Hey, I’ll have you know I am _very_ charming - I grow on people.”

“I don’t see it, but okay,” Shane responds absently, preoccupied with the glowing digital display on his phone screen. “It’s late, I gotta head off - it’s going to get crazy tomorrow once the profile hits the media.”

Ryan looks disappointed but quickly shrugs it off. “Need a lift?”

Shane pushes his chair back, swaying for a blink of an eye before he catches his balance, shooting a crooked half-smile to the other man. “Nah, I’ll walk -  what’s the worse that’ll happen? Unsub would be doing me a favour if he found me.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Ryan warns with a light frown, but Shane just waves him off and pushes his way towards the exit, the crowd having doubled in size since he first sat down.

Outside, inky blackness had soaked into the sky and tall street lights spilled golden pools along the street. Shane leans against the front of Ricardo’s, the bricks still carrying their warmth from the day, while he orientates himself.

On impulse, he retrieves his phone from his pants pocket and pulls up a new chat window with Ryan’s number, quickly locating the ghost emoji and thumbs down icon and tapping ‘send’.

The response is immediate.

(22:07) _Ryan: fuck you_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the consumption of alcohol is not a recommended coping technique for anxiety - many people who live with an anxiety disorder suffer from various forms of substance abuse. I'm not condoning this coping method and if you're struggling with anxiety, it's best that you speak with your doctor. 
> 
> All the cases Shane references in relation to the Charlie Malik poisoning are real and I encourage you to check them out if interested - they're equal parts fascinating and terrifying. 
> 
> Finally, thank you so much to everyone for your patience with this chapter. As I've written on my tumblr, this past month has been incredibly difficult for me, starting with a flood and ending with my mental health taking a serious dive. Your comments and kudos have meant the world to me and really motivated me to stick with this story even when I was feeling at my worst. 
> 
> And as always, you can come chat to me on tumblr @hey-there-ghouls


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane reaches a breaking point. Ryan wants to help. There's problems involving a raccoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned this chapter contains descriptions of blood and gore, anxiety attacks and things that may trigger emetophobia. There's also a healthy amount of swearing because this is Buzzfeed after dark.

Shane can’t seem to catch his breath.

He has no memory as to how he came to be here, bent double, arms wrapped around his torso, knees digging into the tacky carpeting of his hotel room. He knew he was in his hotel room with the same certainty with which he knew his own name, but couldn’t coax himself to lift his head to look around.

His worldview, oddly grey around the edges and punctured with flashes of black spots, had narrowed to the sight of the creased fabric of the pants he’d worn for the last three days. Light and shadow swirl surreally at his periphery, familiar enough to remind him of the sluggish glow thrown out by hotel desk lamp, but wrong in a way that was unsettling.

His body aches, a quiet pulsing pain which radiates outwards from his chest and stomach, causing Shane to feel like he’s come off second best in a fist fight.

For a long time, he remains that way; bathed in the light and not-light of a room that is both familiar and totally alien, breath rasping in his chest, thoughts meandering aimlessly as he attempted to grasp onto any thread of logic for the situation.

Between one heartbeat and the next, something changes. Shane couldn’t say exactly what it was, maybe it was a shift in the air or an almost imperceptible flicker of movement at the corner of his eye, but fear prickles at the back of his neck.  

Shane isn’t alone.

Someone is whistling tunelessly in the bathroom. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t heard it before, the noise oscillating between being so loud that Shane swears he can feel the other person’s breath at his ear, and so faint that he loses it between ragged gasps. Water splashes noisily in the sink and towel racks squeak as the other person clatters around just steps away from the profiler.  

Finally, with a herculean effort that makes his head swim and spots dance before his eyes, Shane lifts his head to look around.

There was so much blood.

It was splattered on every surface of the room like some kind of sickening Rorschach test, running down the walls to congeal on any flat surface. Now and again there were disturbances, smears where someone had attempted to stablise themselves and failed. So much blood had pooled on the carpet that the cheap fibres were no longer able to absorb it all, forming a jagged red river whose current flowed inwards, deeper and deeper towards the centre of the room, towards the epicentre.

Towards Shane.

He knew. Knew from the moment he’d opened his eyes and found himself in this room. Knew as the pain began to lace up his side, burning from the inside out. Knew as all the missing pieces in his memory slotted together with alarming certainty.

With a boneless calm, a slump of tense shoulders, the profiler drew his arms away from himself. Where there had been smooth skin was torn muscle and blood, raw as any carcass at the butcher. His shirt was a tattered mess, strips of fabric sticking to the angry slashes. Somehow, impossibly, he was still bleeding, a hot wetness which relentlessly pulses out, running down his arms and trembling hands.

He curses, or at least thinks he does, his lips move but he can’t gather enough air in his chest to force the sound out. And yet, he surely must have made a noise, for the bathroom falls silent, save only for the sharp drag of something metallic being scraped against the porcelain.   

Then all at once a hand seizes him by his hair, wrenching him painfully backwards, the world lurching nauseatingly as he scrambles to catch his balance. Bracing one hand into the carpeting, blood squelching up beneath his palm, the other protectively, uselessly, pressing against the weeping gashes in his chest, Shane twists to face his assailant.  

Gut punched, all the breath leaves Shane’s body in a rush as he looks into his own eyes, narrowed and twisted with abject hatred. A mirror image of himself stares down at the profiler; splashed liberally with his own blood and bent double at the waist. His head is cocked at an angle so sharp that Shane would’ve sworn his neck were broken if not for the expression on his face. It was one that Shane recognised immediately, and the understanding chilled him so deeply that not even the _hot hot hot_ pulse of his life bleeding away was enough to sate it.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” says the man with his face. “You’re really not gonna like this next part. But if it’s any consolation, I’m going to make something beautiful with what’s left.”

He laughs, a horrific wrenching sound like footfall upon gravel, and gestures so the blade held aloft in his hand catches in the half light. “I mean, let’s face it, you know that you deserve this, not like you’re doing anything useful with your life - think of this as a public service.”

The man who was Shane and not-Shane adjusts his grip on the profiler’s hair, bending the unwilling man over backwards to gain better access as he swings his arm back, bringing the knife up high - And then -

And then -

And then Shane jerks awake; tension which had been coiling in his limbs releasing all at once, jolting him violently. For a moment he struggles, fighting against the sheets which have twisted tightly against him, and then he’s up - leaping over his body which still lay curled on the ground, barely catching his balance as he darts into the bathroom, his feet slick with blood, and he’s retching before his knees even hit the tiles.

A thought scratches at the back of his head, whispering that it’d been days since he’d eaten a proper meal that wasn’t scrounged from the nearby convenience store or dropped in his lap by Officer Ruggirello. But that wasn’t enough to deter the bile that burns its way up his throat, nor the tears that sting at his eyes as he convulses over and over again.

After some time he’s able to force the tremors under control, roughly dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, and gradually swaying to the side until his shoulder comes to rest against the wall. He presses his fingertips against his closed eyes, pushing hard until starlight bursts beneath his eyelids. When he finally opened them, the thrumming _red red red_ bleeding from every surface was gone, replaced by the sterile white on white tiling and mint green wallpapered ceiling.

The vice grip around his ribs eases up a fraction, and Shane is finally able to breathe. He’s still shivering on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with his heart hammering in his chest like it’s set to explode, but it’s a start.

Shane lays back on the tiles, letting the cool ceramic leach into his damp nightclothes, pretending that the burning in his eyes is from looking directly into the overhead light rather than tears, and breathes. He breathes like he’d been taught; inhaling for a count of four, holding it, then exhaling for a count of six. He keeps up that steady rhythm for a long time, until his legs stop shaking and he’s able to roll to his feet, steadying himself on the vanity while he washes out the rancid taste sticking to the back of his throat.

Straightening up, the profiler catches sight of his reflection. He looked like one of the victims from the crime scene photos that were carelessly spread across every available surface of the room; chalk-white skin, deep dark circles under red-rimmed eyes, hair damp and plastered against his head, his shoulders hunched and expression wary.

“We look like shit,” he tells his reflection, before turning his back on his doppelgänger and starting to strip off for a shower. He struggles momentarily to pull his shirt over his head, the fabric sticking to him like a second skin, before discarding it to one side and stepping under the stream of water which was a fraction too cold to be comfortable. He scrubs hard himself, attempting to dislodge the remnants of the dream and the absolute bullshit of the past few days.

Things had gone sharply downhill following the triumphant night at the bar. Cooper, spooked after the death of Marcus Spinney, had been reluctant to rush into any further arrests - knocking back tip after tip as they rolled in from the hotline that was kept manned around the clock.

“Gimme something I can actually use,” he’d bark after Shane had finished running through yet another list of persons of interest he and Jen had sourced from years’ worth of arrest records. “It’s gotta be airtight.”

It wasn’t like he could blame Cooper for being skittish; the profiler had enough keeping him up at night without having to worry about the lawsuit that had been slapped on the Chief of Police’s desk the day after the profile hit the papers. It’d been hand delivered by Stirling Hamilton, a jumped-up lawyer based in California who was best known for taking on high-profile celebrity beefs where he’d spend weeks on breakfast television and five minutes in the courtroom arranging an eight-figure settlement. He was also the owner of the most punchable face Shane had ever seen.

He’d glimpsed it briefly when Hamilton, lured into town by the story of Clint Hampton’s arrest by Tellridge’s finest, had swept into the station; Clint clamped firmly under one arm, a lawsuit brimming with career-ending allegations under the other, and trailed by every journalist in town. Shane, hiding out in the alley behind the station, had thankfully avoided the ensuring kerfuffle after being tipped off by a discreet text from Ryan:

(16:55) _Ryan_ : _Press pack incoming. Bail now if you don’t want to be on tomorrow’s front page_.

Even without the lawsuit dogging him, the lack of progress had become an albatross hung around Shane’s neck, dragging his focus in unhelpful directions while causing him to second-guess every decision. Were he back in Quantico, this kind of inaction would be enough to draw Adam away from whatever dead person he was working on to administer his lucky rabbit’s foot as some kind of talisman to ward off any chance of the case becoming one of those unsolved crimes that YouTuber’s would whisper about for ad money.

But Virginia was far away, and Ray Walters wasn’t around to prevent Shane from slipping back into a routine he’d favoured in his detective days. He stopped going back to his room at night, spending all his time at the station pouring over the case files to see if he’d missed anything. Eating and showering became an afterthought, corralled behind thoughts of forensic profiles and witness lists. He went outside so infrequently that time lost all meaning, the rise and fall of the days marked only by the passage of sunlight through slatted blinds.

He’d planned to continue like this until he caught a break in the case or collapsed from exhaustion; but then Jen caught him napping on the station’s filthy couch and ordered him to return to the hotel and rest, forbidding him from stepping foot in the station for at least twelve hours under the threat of telling Reader that Shane secretly thought he was a great detective.

While that threat - which would surely become part of Reader’s seduction routine at Ricardo’s before he inadvertently disappointed whichever poor tourist he’d managed to coax into sleeping with him - was enough to send Shane back to his room, it was starting to lose its bite. Even the idea of Adam rubbing his rabbit foot in Shane’s hair as part of a cleansing ritual was preferable to how he found himself now: teeth chattering in a too cold shower with the knowledge he would not sleep again tonight.

He shuts the water off and towels off, stepping out into the bedroom to pull on a pair of sweats - leaving his pyjamas abandoned on the bathroom floor until he could take them down to the hotel’s laundromat. Shane has half a mind to head back to the station, Jen’s threat be damned, but he can’t seem to settle on one thought long enough to action it; pacing around the small hotel room, picking up folders and open books, only to abandon them immediately.

On his fourth pass by the nightstand, he snatches up his phone - planning to pull up one of the meditation apps Quinta had installed on his phone at some point, only to come up short at the sight of a text notification.

(00:36) _Ryan_ : _About to eat a five year old packet of pork rinds because nothing in this town is open after 11. Wish me luck_

Shane taps the notification more out of habit than anything else; the chat window opening to reveal Ryan’s message in full. He hadn’t texted Shane since warning him about the lawyer, although to be fair, the profiler hadn’t responded to any of Ryan’s messages since the initial exchange at the bar. It was as good a time as any to change that.

(01:04) _Shane: Did you die?_

(01:05) _Ryan: Yes._

(01:05) _Shane:_ _Wow! And people said it’d be hard to prove ghosts exist_

(01:06) _Ryan: You’re such a dick_

(01:06) _Ryan: Why are you still up anyway? You at work too?_

Shane glances over his shoulder towards the bed where the sheets lay twisted and sweat soaked - they’d need to be washed too.

(01:08) _Shane: Nah, just can’t sleep_

He has enough time to see the message change from ‘delivered’ to ‘read’ before an incoming call from Ryan’s number flashes up on screen. Shane hesitates for the barest of moments, before thumbing over the green emoticon to answer the call.

“Why can’t you sleep?” Ryan is driving, Shane can hear the slight interference of the call being fed through the bluetooth speaker, the sound of a late-night talkback show being muted.

“Ah, you know,” Shane answers, casting around for a suitable response. “Work’s keeping me up.”

“I hear that. I thought all this weird hours crap was behind me - but you get one guy out with food poisoning and suddenly everyone’s routine is thrown off,” Ryan scoffs. “Get your shit together, Roland!”

“Yeah, fuck you, Roland,” Shane agrees, restlessly sorting his crime scene photos back into a neat pile to keep his hands busy while he tries to focus on the conversation.

He doesn’t do a very good job of it, because a moment later Ryan asks, “You alright, man? You sound kinda, I don’t know, spacey?”

“Uh,” Shane says inelegantly, attempting to drag his thoughts in order. But then his hands find an image of Justin Belli curled up on the hotel floor with his brains spilling across the carpet, and Shane blinks and suddenly all he can see is the blood rushing in from all sides and there’s a knife in his hands and how the fuck did that get there what did he do how could he let it get like this again and -

\- _fuck, I gotta get out of here_

“Okay,” agrees Ryan easily, and Shane realises he spoke that last part aloud, “D’ya want me to come get you? I’m not too far away - we can go back to my place and hang out.”

“Um,” Shane pauses to clear his throat, the angry red faded away once more. With difficulty he unclenches his fingers from around the picture, smoothing out the crumpled marks. “Sure, yeah, let’s do that.”  

“Cool,” the other man says, his tone chipper. “I’ll meet you in that side lane next to the hotel, there’s never anywhere to stop out front at this time, just go down the stairs and out the fire exit - Samuel’s too cheap to actually arm the door so you won’t set off any alarms.”

“You know a lot about this place,” Shane observes faintly, already pulling on his shoes.

“I’m paid to be a busybody,” Ryan laughs, “See you in a few.”

Shane leaves the room in a hurry, barely pausing to pocket his wallet and phone before the door clicks shut behind him. He follows Ryan’s instructions; heading down hallway, through the door to the staircase, down five flights of stairs, and out the unlocked - _Jesus this place really needs better security_ \- door into the alleyway.

He leans back against the brickwork, arms wrapped around himself, as he watches the occasional flash of headlights cast light across the otherwise unlit side street. The sudden sound of car engine to his right almost makes Shane jump, instead managing to turn quickly on the spot to watch a nondescript dark car with its headlights off roll slowly toward him.

The driver’s window rolls down and Ryan sticks his head out. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Ryan doesn’t look particularly apologetic, his smile incandescent. “I just remembered on the way over that I’ve got this fancy jalapeño and cheddar popcorn that I’ve been saving, what'd ya say we crack that open when we get in?”

“Sure, sounds great,” Shane lies as his stomach twists sickeningly.

Ryan leans further out the window to look at the profiler, squinting against the glow of his dashboard. “Hey no offence, man, but uh, you look like shit - are you okay?”

“Yes,” Shane says, the second lie dripping off his tongue like honey as he crosses over to the passenger side door and climbs in. Ryan says no more, letting silence overtake as he flicks on the headlights when he reaches the end of the side street and pulls out onto the main road.

Shane leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. He idly wonders, in the way that he always doubts his decisions when his thoughts move like molasses, whether it was a good idea to accept Ryan’s offer. He should’ve stayed in his room, called someone who’d understand - it wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken Ray up in the middle of the night - even Eugene, who always seemed to be in the back of an Uber whenever Shane called, would be willing to listen.

But all his recent check-ins with Ray had been filled terse discussions as to how best handle the case punctuated with long silences, and he hadn’t spoken to anyone from his team since boarding the flight from Virginia. Even if he had been able to fight off the numb feeling which had been crawling through his limbs ever since he’d woken up and was able to pick up the phone to call someone, Shane doesn’t know what he’d say.

_That he was tired. That he wanted to go home. That he wanted to go see his therapist for the first time in almost a year. That things were getting bad again. That sometimes he looked at crime scene photos and could feel the pull of the blade through flesh as clear as anything he’d ever felt. That sometimes he saw people on the street and imagined how beautiful they’d look with their innards splayed out and eyeballs plucked from their skull. That he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks because every time he closed his eyes there were bodies painted on his eyelids. That there were times where he couldn’t see the unsub and no matter how hard he looked all he could see was his own fingerprints burnt all over the case like a brand and he was_ fucking _this up so badly -_

“Breathe.”

Air punches back into body, causing Shane to cough and jerk forward in his seat - the seat belt catching him before he can hit his head on the dashboard. His hands are curled so tightly into fists that tension violently shakes its way up his arms, his bitten-down nails digging half-crescent moons into his palms. He breathes in for a count of four, tastes copper at the back of his throat, and exhales for a count of six - forcing himself to relax his fists and slump back. 

When Shane finally looks over at the other man, Ryan is staring at him with open concern, his brows knitted together in worry.

“I don’t think I’m okay, actually,” Shane says. The words trip over themselves in their rush to get out but Ryan seems to understand because he nods slowly, his expression shifting into something unreadable.

With what seemed to be deliberate care, the reporter turns gradually to look back out the windshield, prompting Shane to do the same. They’d come to a stop at the edge of town, the headlights cutting twin beams into the darkness, illuminating a solitary stop sign and a thicket of trees which seemed to stretch on into eternity. The two men sit in silence for a long moment with Ryan visibility turning something over his mind. Eventually he seems to reach a decision, for he laughs and glances back at Shane.

“Huh, that’s so weird” he says. “I totally went on autopilot for a minute there, this is _nowhere_ near my apartment.” Ryan puts the car into gear and swing it around to head back into town, the street lights flashing across the dashboard once more. “I know that was an illegal U-turn but don’t tell anyone, I can’t afford that ticket.”

“I’m off the clock,” Shane assures him, thrown off balance by Ryan’s lack of reaction to his admission. “Besides, I always hated being on traffic duty back in my cop days - I let a lot of things slide just to get out of doing paperwork.”

“You used to be a cop? You always seemed like one of those perfect FBI agents that J Edgar Hoover created in a lab, Captain America style.”

Shane chuckles humourlessly. “Nah, they never let those guys off base. I was a cop in Chicago for about two years before I got picked up to do this fast-tracked detective program because I showed ‘promise’ - they really made a mistake there.”

“So how’d you end up at the FBI?” Ryan asks, taking his eyes off the road to look at Shane.

“Or don’t answer, that’s cool,” he continues when the profiler turns away, his expression twisting as if tasting something bitter. “We can talk about something else - like that uh, like whatever the fuck happened back there? You looked like you were having a panic attack or something - or was it a heart attack? I never got my medical explorer badge in Scouts so you gotta tell me if it’s a heart attack.”

“Why were you driving us out of town?” Shane asks, abruptly focusing back in on Ryan’s one-sided conversation.

“I told you,” Ryan answers, “I was on autopilot - back when I was a cadet sometimes I worked so late that there was no point going home before I started my shift at the cafe so I’d go for a drive, there’s a lookout not far from here that I like to go sit at - there’s no light pollution so the view is great.”

“Looking for little green men?” Shane asks, the corners of his mouth flicking up into the ghost of a smile.

“Dude, are you serious?” Ryan shakes his head, cutting a corner as he swings down a side street. “This is Bigfoot county, c’mon, it’s like you’re not even listening to me.”

He brings the car to a stop in front of a three-storey red brick apartment building with a fire escape barely clinging to the side, cuts the engine and jumps out without looking to see if Shane would follow. The state of disrepair continued through the unlocked entryway and into the poorly lit hallway lined with peeling wallpaper and cracked fixtures. Shane, who’d been trailing behind Ryan like a helium balloon being pulled by a child, suddenly trips and stumbles forward - only Ryan catching him by the sleeve prevented him from falling on his face.

“Whoopsie,” Ryan says, setting the other man back on his feet. “I always forget to tell people about that hole in the carpet - there was a, uh, well there’s no great way to put this...a raccoon lived here for a long time and he didn’t pay rent but he ate a lot of the floor.”

“Typical millennial,” Shane mutters.

Ryan’s apartment was a completely different world from what lay beyond the threshold. It was inordinately clean and stark, with only the battered furniture giving any hint as to the man which lived within. No pictures hung upon the walls and even the few trinkets - a Paddington Bear plushie, a framed photo of some sports team Shane should probably know the name of, and an alien bobblehead - were placed with such deliberate care on bookshelves and the built-in desk that it lacked the warmth Shane had come to associate with the other man.

“This is nice,” Shane hesitatingly offers from the position he’d taken up by the entry as Ryan walked around flipping on lights.

“No it’s not,” snorts Ryan. “It looks like a shitty dorm room, but it’s not like I’m ever here and anyway, you should see my bedroom - actually no, don’t, it’s a mess in there, don’t look in there.”

He strides over to a door near the far wall, yanking it shut and turning around, finally noticing that Shane hadn’t followed him deeper into the apartment. “Sit,” he gestures, “Sit down before you fall down.”

“Ryan-”

“Sit down Bonestilits McGee!”

Shane glances over at the futon which sat close to the kitchen; it was a jarring contrast to the clean and crisp furniture cluttered throughout the apartment - rusted brown and sagging alarmingly in the middle, the futon looked like it’d seen better days. It also looked like the single most comfortable thing Shane had seen in weeks.

He sinks down into it, having to shift his weight at the last moment to keep his legs on the ground. Ryan walks past him towards the kitchen, only to come pacing back a moment later, his body language loud enough that the profiler can see that he’s working up the nerve to say something. It wasn’t hard to guess what Ryan would want to talk about and Shane had to admit, he’d chosen his moment well; waiting until they were safely within his apartment and not driving along some backstreet where Shane may have attempted to jump from the moving car to avoid the conversation.

He couldn’t blame Ryan for being curious, anyone would be if they’d seen the amount of vulnerability Shane had unwittingly revealed in front of Ryan. And, to be fair, Shane almost wanted to talk about it - he’d become accustomed to debriefing with someone every time he experienced a panic attack. It was one of the few coping strategies he actively tried to maintain, having long ago fallen into the habit of approaching Ray whenever his thoughts got too loud. 

But Ryan wasn’t Ray - he was cocky and loud, far too easily swayed into belief by shaky-cam footage of shapes in the darkness, considerate to a fault, and always seemed to be watching those around him far too closely to be passed off as mild interest. And of course, he was a reporter, and Shane by his own nature was constantly wary of revealing anything that could be used against him, especially to someone who made their living tripping people up in their own words. Yet despite all this, Shane realised he genuinely wanted Ryan to like him; he was easy to talk to and was the only person in this town who had allowed Shane to let go of the case long enough to unwind. He wanted to unburden himself on Ryan, but kept his mouth shut against the words that crawled their way up the back of his throat.

“Okay,” Ryan begins, snapping the profiler out of his thoughts, the word so weighted that Shane tries to repress a flinch.

“So I’m trying real hard not to go all mother hen on you, but you call me up in the middle of the night wanting to be picked up, then have a panic attack in my car, and then act like that’s something that happens so often it doesn’t even warrant commenting on. And that’s just tonight! I’m not even getting started on all the times I’ve seen you be super jumpy or that night when Tracey Velour died and you full on collapsed outside.” 

“I didn’t call you, you called me,” Shane argues weakly, not looking up from his clasped hands.

“Please don’t try to bring logic into my dramatics,” Ryan retaliates, stopping right in front of Shane and crouching down. “Look, I know we barely know each other and about 90% of our conversations so far have been you dragging me because you can’t admit I’m right about the supernatural - ah,” he holds up a hand to stop Shane when the other man attempts to interrupt, “I’m not done. Everyone can see that you’re good at your job, but you are _shit_ at looking after yourself.”

Shane concedes the point with a small shrug - it was true, he couldn’t even be trusted with a house plant.

“Like I said, we barely know each other, but I know enough to know that whatever it is you’re going through clearly isn’t new,” Ryan continues, returning to his pacing. “I don’t know how you deal with it usually, but I think you need a friend...let me be your friend, Shane - I’m worried about you.”

Ryan watched as the other man’s expression seemed to shatter, the profiler quickly looking away, his posture rigid. “You said back in the car that you’re not okay,” Ryan persists. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Shane is silent for a long moment, hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt, pulling it taut. When he eventually speaks, his voice comes out strangled and hoarse, “It’s not - um, it’s not great, Ryan. This case, it’s been...bringing up a lot memories from a really bad time.”

“Yeah?” Ryan’s expression is painfully earnest. “What happened?”

There’s a buzzing in Shane’s ears. His skin feels too tight, as if it’s about to split down the middle and spill out all the ugliness for the whole world to see. He can see that Ryan is still talking, gently picking at all his loose edges in at attempt to unravel him.

“Ryan -”

“Seriously, man, I’ve heard a lot of shit over the years you can’t shock me -”

“Ryan!” The buzzing has become an overpowering roar, and his voice comes out far louder than he intended - abruptly silencing the other man.

Shane’s on the edge of a cliff with one foot hanging over the abyss. Every nerve in his body is screaming at him to back away but Ryan is looking at him with such worry and he can feel the exhaustion deep in his bones that it’s just easier to take that last step out -

“Ryan, I killed someone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shane's breathing technique referenced throughout this chapter is a breathing exercise designed to help the vagus nerve send a signal to your brain to turn up the parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system - basically to cut off the 'flight or fight' response that can be triggered during anxiety attacks.
> 
> The popcorn Ryan has been saving is a very real flavour from Popcornopolis. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone for your incredible patience in waiting for this chapter. I feel horrible for letting this slip so behind in the schedule, but my mental health has been very poor these last few months and for the sake of my wellbeing I needed to put all my projects on hold. I feel much more grounded now and should be getting into a more regular posting schedule from here on in. 
> 
> An extra special thank you to everyone who has been leaving such wonderful comments - your kind words have really carried me through this past few months. 
> 
> And as always, you can come chat to me on tumblr @hey-there-ghouls


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